Efficiency functionals for the L\'evy flight foraging hypothesis

TL;DR

This paper analyzes optimal foraging strategies modeled by fractional heat equations, revealing bifurcations between Levy and Brownian motion patterns based on environmental scenarios and efficiency functionals.

Contribution

It introduces and analyzes efficiency functionals for Levy flight foraging, identifying bifurcation phenomena and optimal strategies in various biological scenarios.

Findings

Bifurcation between Levy and Brownian strategies identified.

Optimal strategies depend on environmental configurations.

Results align with and extend Levy foraging hypothesis paradigms.

Abstract

We consider a forager diffusing via a fractional heat equation and we introduce several efficiency functionals whose optimality is discussed in relation to the L\'evy exponent of the evolution equation. Several biological scenarios, such as a target close to the forager, a sparse environment, a target located away from the forager and two targets are specifically taken into account. The optimal strategies of each of these configurations are here analyzed explicitly also with the aid of some special functions of classical flavor and the results are confronted with the existing paradigms of the L\'evy foraging hypothesis. Interestingly, one discovers bifurcation phenomena in which a sudden switch occurs between an optimal (but somehow unreliable) L\'evy foraging pattern of inverse square law type and a less ideal (but somehow more secure) classical Brownian motion strategy. Additionally, optimal foraging strategies can be detected in the vicinity of the Brownian one even in cases in which the Brownian one is pessimizing an efficiency functional.