The Lévy flight foraging hypothesis: forgetting about memory may lead to false verification of Brownian motion

Movement Ecology

Atle Mysterud¹  Arild O Gautestad¹ 

[1] Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1066, Blindern, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway

关键词: Scale-free space use;    Statistical mechanics of movement;    Site fidelity;    Memory-influenced movement;    Lévy flight foraging hypothesis;    Optimal foraging;   

Others  :  802771
DOI  :  10.1186/2051-3933-1-9

 received in 2013-04-14, accepted in 2013-08-12,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

The Lévy flight foraging hypothesis predicts a transition from scale-free Lévy walk (LW) to scale-specific Brownian motion (BM) as an animal moves from resource-poor towards resource-rich environment. However, the LW-BM continuum implies a premise of memory-less search, which contradicts the cognitive capacity of vertebrates.

Results

We describe methods to test if apparent support for LW-BM transitions may rather be a statistical artifact from movement under varying intensity of site fidelity. A higher frequency of returns to previously visited patches (stronger site fidelity) may erroneously be interpreted as a switch from LW towards BM. Simulations of scale-free, memory-enhanced space use illustrate how the ratio between return events and scale-free exploratory movement translates to varying strength of site fidelity. An expanded analysis of GPS data of 18 female red deer, Cervus elaphus, strengthens previous empirical support of memory-enhanced and scale-free space use in a northern forest ecosystem.

Conclusion

A statistical mechanical model architecture that describes foraging under environment-dependent variation of site fidelity may allow for higher realism of optimal search models and movement ecology in general, in particular for vertebrates with high cognitive capacity.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Gautestad and Mysterud; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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