  A wide spectrum of Peritrichous bacteria undergo considerable physiological
changes when they are inoculated onto nutrition-rich surfaces and exhibit a
rapid and collective migration denoted as swarming. Thereby, the length of such
swarmer cells and their number of flagella increases substantially. In this
article, we investigated the properties of individual E. coli-type swarmer
cells confined between two parallel walls via mesoscale hydrodynamic
simulations, combining molecular dynamics simulations of the swarmer cell with
the multiparticle particle collision dynamics approach for the embedding fluid.
E. coli-type swarmer cells are three-times longer than their planktonic counter
parts, but their flagella density is comparable. By varying the wall
separation, we analyze the confinement effect on the flagella arrangement, on
the distribution of cells in the gap between the walls, and on the cell
dynamics. We find only a weak dependence of confinement on the bundle structure
and dynamics. The distribution of cells in the gap changes from a
geometry-dominated behavior for very narrow to fluid-dominated behavior for
wider gaps, where cells are preferentially located in the gap center for
narrower gaps and stay preferentially next to one of the walls for wider gaps.
Dynamically, the cells exhibit a wide spectrum of migration behaviors,
depending on their flagella bundle arrangement, and ranges from straight
swimming to wall rolling.
