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Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk

A key challenge in movement ecology is to understand how animals move in nature. Previous studies have predicted that animals should perform a special class of random walks, called Lévy walk, to obtain more targets. However, some empirical studies did not support this hypothesis, and the relationshi...

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Autores principales: Abe, Masato S., Shimada, Masakazu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636162/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26544687
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004601
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author Abe, Masato S.
Shimada, Masakazu
author_facet Abe, Masato S.
Shimada, Masakazu
author_sort Abe, Masato S.
collection PubMed
description A key challenge in movement ecology is to understand how animals move in nature. Previous studies have predicted that animals should perform a special class of random walks, called Lévy walk, to obtain more targets. However, some empirical studies did not support this hypothesis, and the relationship between search strategy and ecological factors is still unclear. We focused on ecological factors, such as predation risk, and analyzed whether Lévy walk may not be favored. It was remarkable that the ecological factors often altered an optimal search strategy from Lévy walk to Brownian walk, depending on the speed of the predator’s movement, density of predators, etc. This occurred because higher target encounter rates simultaneously led searchers to higher predation risks. Our findings indicate that animals may not perform Lévy walks often, and we suggest that it is crucial to consider the ecological context for evaluating the search strategy performed by animals in the field.
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spelling pubmed-46361622015-11-13 Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk Abe, Masato S. Shimada, Masakazu PLoS Comput Biol Research Article A key challenge in movement ecology is to understand how animals move in nature. Previous studies have predicted that animals should perform a special class of random walks, called Lévy walk, to obtain more targets. However, some empirical studies did not support this hypothesis, and the relationship between search strategy and ecological factors is still unclear. We focused on ecological factors, such as predation risk, and analyzed whether Lévy walk may not be favored. It was remarkable that the ecological factors often altered an optimal search strategy from Lévy walk to Brownian walk, depending on the speed of the predator’s movement, density of predators, etc. This occurred because higher target encounter rates simultaneously led searchers to higher predation risks. Our findings indicate that animals may not perform Lévy walks often, and we suggest that it is crucial to consider the ecological context for evaluating the search strategy performed by animals in the field. Public Library of Science 2015-11-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4636162/ /pubmed/26544687 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004601 Text en © 2015 Abe, Shimada http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Abe, Masato S.
Shimada, Masakazu
Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk
title Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk
title_full Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk
title_fullStr Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk
title_full_unstemmed Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk
title_short Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk
title_sort lévy walks suboptimal under predation risk
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636162/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26544687
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004601
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