Stochastic foundations of movement ecology II: Movement patterns and search efficiency

Date

Nov 3, 2015

Time

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker

Daniel Campos

Affiliation

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

Language

en

Main Topic

Physik

Other Topics

Physik

Host

Advanced Study Group Klages

Description

This is the second part of an introductory three-part mini lecture series, based on the reference cited below. Search theory aims at (i) identifying optimal paths to promote encounters between 'searchers' and their corresponding 'targets' and (ii) assess and compare the efficiency of different search strategies. Statistical physics approaches to this problem often build on the idea of search as an uninformed process or, equivalently, as random movement under undertainty. Within this context, a convenient measure of search efficiency is the Mean-First Passage Time (MFPT) of the corresponding random walkers through the target position. In this lecture we will review the properties of the main models/mechanisms historically used in the biological literature to describe random motion of living organisms, and then we will focus on the methods available for computing the MFPT in these situations. This allows us to discuss in particular the conditions under which optimization of search efficiency is mathematically feasible. Ref.: Vicenc Mendez, Daniel Campos, Frederic Bartumeus, Stochastic foundations of movement ecology (Springer, Berlin, 2013)

Last modified: Nov 3, 2015, 8:39:50 AM