Fig. 3: C. elegans’ rule of thumb is driven by the number of bacteria per unit surface.
From: Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb
Color and shape of markers identify bacterial strains (see legend in Fig. 1). a Biomass density for each strain at OD = 1 (measured in grams of dry weight, gDW, per liter), versus its attraction density (\({D}_{{{\mbox{attract}}}}\)). Black line: Inverse relation (proportional to 1/\({D}_{{{\mbox{attract}}}}\)), which would indicate that biomass density is responsible for the observed differences in \({D}_{{{\mbox{attract}}}}\). b Number of cells per microliter at OD = 1 for each strain, versus \({D}_{{{\mbox{attract}}}}\) for each strain. Black line: Inverse relation (proportional to 1/\({D}_{{{\mbox{attract}}}}\)), which indicates that the number of cells is responsible for the observed differences in \({D}_{{{\mbox{attract}}}}\). c Relative number of worms found at each food patch, as a function of bacterial density (measured in cells/mm2) in the food patch. Black line: Sigmoid, fitted to all strains. d Measured proportion of worms in each food patch, versus proportion predicted by the sigmoid in (c). All errorbars show the 95% confidence interval, computed via bootstrapping; see Supplementary Table 1 for sample sizes and Supplementary Data 1 for the data and computer code that generate this figure.
