The Hurst exponents of Nitzschia sp. diatom trajectories observed by light microscopy

• We determine Hurst parameters for digitally recorded 2D trajectories of a diatom species.
• The WT-DFA scaling method is used.
• We thus give statistical evidence for the persistent character of diatom motion.

We present the results of an experiment with light microscopy performed to capture the trajectories of live Nitzschia sp. diatoms. The time series corresponding to the motility of this kind of cells along ninety-five circular-like trajectories have been obtained and analyzed with the scaling statistical method of detrended fluctuation analysis optimized via a wavelet transform. In this way, we determined the Hurst parameters, in two orthogonal directions, which characterize the nature of the motion of live diatoms in light microscopy experiments. We have found mean values of these directional Hurst parameters between 0.70 and 0.63 with overall standard errors below 0.15. These numerical values give evidence that the motion of Nitzschia sp. diatoms is of persistent type and suggest an active cell motility with a kind of memory associated with long-range correlations on the path of their trajectories. For the collected statistics, we also find that the values of the Hurst exponents depend on the number of abrupt turns that occur in the diatom trajectory and on the type of wavelet, although their mean values do not change much.