Microscopic swimmers, both living and synthetic, often dwell in anisotropic viscoelastic environments. The most representative realization of such an environment is water-soluble liquid crystals. Here, we study how the local orientation order of liquid crystal affects the motion of a prototypical elliptical microswimmer. In the framework of well-validated Beris-Edwards model, we show that the microswimmer’s shape and its surface anchoring strength affect the swimming direction and can lead to reorientation transition. Furthermore, there exists a critical surface anchoring strength for non-spherical bacteria-like microswimmers, such that swimming occurs perpendicular in a sub-critical case and parallel in super-critical case. Finally, we demonstrate that for large propulsion speeds active microswimmers generate topological defects in the bulk of the liquid crystal. We show that the location of these defects elucidates how a microswimmer chooses its swimming direction. Our results can guide experimental works on control of bacteria transport in complex anisotropic environments.

活的和人工的微观游泳者经常住在各向异性的粘弹性环境中。这种环境最有代表性的实现是水溶性液晶。在这里，我们研究液晶的局部取向顺序如何影响原型椭圆微游泳器的运动。在经过充分验证的Beris-Edwards模型的框架中，我们表明，微游泳者的形状及其表面锚定强度会影响游泳方向，并可能导致重新定向转变。此外，对于非球形细菌状微游泳者而言，存在关键的表面锚固强度，使得在亚临界情况下游泳垂直发生，而在超临界情况下游泳发生平行。最后，我们证明了对于大的推进速度，有源微游泳器会在大部分液晶中产生拓扑缺陷。我们表明，这些缺陷的位置阐明了微游泳者如何选择其游泳方向。我们的结果可以指导在复杂的各向异性环境中控制细菌迁移的实验工作。