Bacteria push the limits of sensory precision to navigate dynamic chemical gradients*

The limited precision of sensory organs places fundamental constraints on organismal performance. An open question, however, is whether organisms are routinely pushed to these limits, and how limits might influence interactions between populations of organisms and their environment. By combining a method to generate dynamic, replicable resource landscapes, high-speed tracking of freely moving bacteria, a new mathematical theory, and agent-based simulations, we show that sensory noise ultimately limits when and where bacteria can detect and climb chemical gradients. Our results suggest the typical chemical landscapes bacteria inhabit are dominated by noise that masks shallow gradients, and that the spatiotemporal dynamics of bacterial aggregations can be predicted by mapping the region where gradient signal rises above noise.