Nematode Chemotaxis: Gradual Turns, Sharp Turns, and Modulated Turn Angles

We examine strategies used by the soil-dwelling nematode \textit{Caenorhabditis Elegans} for chemotaxis in complex environments. The proposed description is based on our recently developed piecewise-harmonic-curvature model of nematode locomotion [PLoS ONE, 7(7) e40121 (2012)], where random harmonic-curvature modes represent elementary locomotory movements. We show that the previously described gradual-turn and sharp-turn chemotaxis strategies can be unified in our model. The gradual-turn mechanism relies on crawling amplitude changes commensurate with the undulation frequency. The sharp-turn mechanism consists in modulation of the frequency of jumps to large-amplitude modes. We hypothesize that there exists a third strategy, where the nematode adjusts the variance of the amplitude distribution. Such adjustments result in a modulation of the magnitude of random turns, with smaller turns performed when the nematode moves toward the increasing chemoatractant concentration. Experiments are proposed to determine if the third strategy is present in the nematode behavior.