Stochastic optimal foraging: tuning intensive and extensive dynamics in random searches.

ABSTRACT: Recent theoretical developments had laid down the proper mathematical means to understand how the structural complexity of search patterns may improve foraging efficiency. Under information-deprived scenarios and specific landscape configurations, Lévy walks and flights are known to lead to high search efficiencies. Based on a one-dimensional comparative analysis we show a mechanism by which, at random, a searcher can optimize the encounter with close and distant targets. The mechanism consists of combining an optimal diffusivity (optimally enhanced diffusion) with a minimal diffusion constant. In such a way the search dynamics adequately balances the tension between finding close and distant targets, while, at the same time, shifts the optimal balance towards relatively larger close-to-di

SUBMITTER: Bartumeus F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4162546 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature