Mussels realize Weierstrassian Lévy walks as composite correlated random walks
Reynolds, A.M. (2014). Mussels realize Weierstrassian Lévy walks as composite correlated random walks. NPG Scientific Reports 4(4409): 5 pp. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep04409
In: Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group). Nature Publishing Group: London. ISSN 2045-2322; e-ISSN 2045-2322, more
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| Keywords |
Movements (local)
Mytilus edulis Linnaeus, 1758 [WoRMS]
Marine/Coastal |
| Abstract |
Composite correlated random walks (CCRW) have been posited as a potential replacement for Lévy walks and it has also been suggested that CCRWs have been mistaken for Lévy walks. Here I test an alternative, emerging hypothesis: namely that some organisms approximate Lévy walks as an innate CCRW. It is shown that the tri-modal CCRW found to describe accurately the movement patterns of mussels (Mytilus edulis) during spatial pattern formation in mussel beds can be regarded as being the first three levels in a hierarchy of nested movement patterns which if extended indefinitely would correspond to a Lévy walk whose characteristic (power-law) exponent is tuned to nearly minimize the time required to form patterned beds. The mussels realise this Lévy walk to good approximation across a biologically meaningful range of scales. This demonstrates that the CCRW not only describes mussel movement patterns, it explains them. |
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