1 research outputs found
Bio-imitaiton of Mexican migration routes to the USA with slime mould on 3D terrains
Plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is a large single cell visible by unaided
eye. It shows sophisticated behavioural traits in foraging for nutrients and
developing an optimal transport network of protoplasmic tubes spanning sources
of nutrients. When placed in an environment with distributed sources of
nutrients the cell 'computes' an optimal graph spanning the nutrients by
growing a network of protoplasmic tubes. P. polycephalum imitates development
of man-made transport networks of a country when configuration of nutrients
represents major urban areas. We employ this feature of the slime mould to
imitate mexican migration to USA. The Mexican migration to USA is the World's
largest migration system. We bio-physically imitate the migration using slime
mould P. polycephalum. In laboratory experiments with 3D Nylon terrains of USA
we imitated development of migratory routes from Mexico-USA border to ten urban
areas with high concentration of Mexican migrants. From results of laboratory
experiments we extracted topologies of migratory routes, and highlighted a role
of elevations in shaping the human movement networks