Self-transport of swimming bacteria is impaired by porous microstructure

Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments, where they mediate essential biogeochemical processes in quiescent wetlands and sediments. However, a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms regulating self-transport in the confined interstices of porous media is lacking, and determining the interactions between cells and surfaces of the solid matrix becomes paramount. Here, we precisely track the movement of bacteria ( Magnetococcus marinus ) through a series of microfluidic porous media with broadly varying geometries and show how successive scattering events from solid surfaces decorrelate cell motion. Ordered versus disordered media impact the cells’ motility over short ranges, but their large-scale transport properties are regulated by the cutoff of their persistent motility. An effective mean free path is established as the key geometrical parameter controlling cell transport, and we implement a theoretical model that universally predicts the effective cell diffusion for the diverse geometries studied here. These results aid in our understanding of the physical ecology of swimming cells, and their role in environmental and health hazards in stagnant porous media.