Efficient search of multiple types of targets

Random searches often take place in fragmented landscapes. Also, in many instances like animal foraging, significant benefits to the searcher arise from visits to a large diversity of patches with a well-balanced distribution of targets found. Up to date, such aspects have been widely ignored in the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 2015-12, Vol.92 (6), p.062135-062135, Article 062135
Main Authors: Wosniack, M E, Raposo, E P, Viswanathan, G M, da Luz, M G E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Models, Theoretical
Stochastic Processes
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Summary:Random searches often take place in fragmented landscapes. Also, in many instances like animal foraging, significant benefits to the searcher arise from visits to a large diversity of patches with a well-balanced distribution of targets found. Up to date, such aspects have been widely ignored in the usual single-objective analysis of search efficiency, in which one seeks to maximize just the number of targets found per distance traversed. Here we address the problem of determining the best strategies for the random search when these multiple-objective factors play a key role in the process. We consider a figure of merit (efficiency function), which properly "scores" the mentioned tasks. By considering random walk searchers with a power-law asymptotic Lévy distribution of step lengths, p(ℓ)∼ℓ(-μ), with 1
ISSN:1539-3755
1550-2376
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevE.92.062135