Bidimensional intermittent search processes: an alternative to Levy flights strategies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a bidimensional intermittent search model as an alternative to Levy flights, demonstrating analytically that such strategies can minimize search time for non-revisitable targets, with potential universal features.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new bidimensional intermittent search model that is analytically shown to optimize search time for non-revisitable targets, offering an alternative to Levy flights.

Findings

Intermittent strategies can minimize search time.

Optimal durations of search phases are robust across detection modes.

A universal feature of optimal ballistic phase duration is identified.

Abstract

Levy flights are known to be optimal search strategies in the particular case of revisitable targets. In the relevant situation of non revisitable targets, we propose an alternative model of bidimensional search processes, which explicitly relies on the widely observed intermittent behavior of foraging animals. We show analytically that intermittent strategies can minimize the search time, and therefore do constitute real optimal strategies. We study two representative modes of target detection, and determine which features of the search time are robust and do not depend on the specific characteristics of detection mechanisms. In particular, both modes lead to a global minimum of the search time as a function of the typical times spent in each state, for the same optimal duration of the ballistic phase. This last quantity could be a universal feature of bidimensional intermittent search strategies.