Modeling the mobility of living organisms in heterogeneous landscapes: Does memory improve foraging success?

Thanks to recent technological advances, it is now possible to track with an unprecedented precision and for long periods of time the movement patterns of many living organisms in their habitat. The increasing amount of data available on single trajectories offers the possibility of understanding how animals move and of testing basic movement models. Random walks have long represented the main description for micro-organisms and have also been useful to understand the foraging behaviour of large animals. Nevertheless, most vertebrates, in particular humans and other primates, rely on sophisticated cognitive tools such as spatial maps, episodic memory and travel cost discounting. These properties call for other modeling approaches of mobility patterns. We propose a foraging framework where a learning mobile agent uses a combination of memory-based and random steps. We investigate how advantageous it is to use memory for exploiting resources in heterogeneous and changing environments. An adequate balance of determinism and random exploration is found to maximize the foraging efficiency and to generate trajectories with an intricate spatio-temporal order. Based on this approach, we propose some tools for analysing the non-random nature of mobility patterns in general.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, improved discussio

Nonlinear Reaction–Diffusion Process Models Improve Inference for Population Dynamics

Partial differential equations (PDEs) are a useful tool for modeling spatiotemporal dynamics of ecological processes. However, as an ecological process evolves, we need statistical models that can adapt to changing dynamics as new data are collected. We developed a model that combines an ecological diffusion equation and logistic growth to characterize colonization processes of a population that establishes long‐term equilibrium over a heterogeneous environment. We also developed a homogenization strategy to statistically upscale the PDE for faster computation and adopted a hierarchical framework to accommodate multiple data sources collected at different spatial scales. We highlighted the advantages of using a logistic reaction component instead of a Malthusian component when population growth demonstrates asymptotic behavior. As a case study, we demonstrated that our model improves spatiotemporal abundance forecasts of sea otters in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Furthermore, we predicted spatially varying local equilibrium abundances as a result of environmentally driven diffusion and density‐regulated growth. Integrating equilibrium abundances over the study area in our application enabled us to infer the overall carrying capacity of sea otters in Glacier Bay, Alaska

Self-organization, scaling and collapse in a coupled automaton model of foragers and vegetation resources with seed dispersal

We introduce a model of traveling agents ({\it e.g.} frugivorous animals) who feed on randomly located vegetation patches and disperse their seeds, thus modifying the spatial distribution of resources in the long term. It is assumed that the survival probability of a seed increases with the distance to the parent patch and decreases with the size of the colonized patch. In turn, the foraging agents use a deterministic strategy with memory, that makes them visit the largest possible patches accessible within minimal travelling distances. The combination of these interactions produce complex spatio-temporal patterns. If the patches have a small initial size, the vegetation total mass (biomass) increases with time and reaches a maximum corresponding to a self-organized critical state with power-law distributed patch sizes and L\'evy-like movement patterns for the foragers. However, this state collapses as the biomass sharply decreases to reach a noisy stationary regime characterized by corrections to scaling. In systems with low plant competition, the efficiency of the foraging rules leads to the formation of heterogeneous vegetation patterns with $1/f^{\alpha}$ frequency spectra, and contributes, rather counter-intuitively, to lower the biomass levels.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Detection of quantum light in the presence of noise

Detection of quantum light in the presence of dark counts and background radiation noise is considered. The corresponding positive operator-valued measure is obtained and photocounts statistics of quantum light in the presence of noise is studied.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; misprints correcte

M. Kontsevich's graph complex and the Grothendieck-Teichmueller Lie algebra

We show that the zeroth cohomology of M. Kontsevich's graph complex is isomorphic to the Grothendieck-Teichmueller Lie algebra grt_1. The map is explicitly described. This result has applications to deformation quantization and Duflo theory. We also compute the homotopy derivations of the Gerstenhaber operad. They are parameterized by grt_1, up to one class (or two, depending on the definitions). More generally, the homotopy derivations of the (non-unital) E_n operads may be expressed through the cohomology of a suitable graph complex. Our methods also give a second proof of a result of H. Furusho, stating that the pentagon equation for grt_1-elements implies the hexagon equation

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in amnestically induced persistence

We investigate a recently proposed non-Markovian random walk model characterized by loss of memories of the recent past and amnestically induced persistence. We report numerical and analytical results showing the complete phase diagram, consisting of 4 phases, for this system: (i) classical nonpersistence, (ii) classical persistence (iii) log-periodic nonpersistence and (iv) log-periodic persistence driven by negative feedback. The first two phases possess continuous scale invariance symmetry, however log-periodicity breaks this symmetry. Instead, log-periodic motion satisfies discrete scale invariance symmetry, with complex rather than real fractal dimensions. We find for log-periodic persistence evidence not only of statistical but also of geometric self-similarity.Comment: 4 pages, 2 color fig

Amnestically induced persistence in random walks

We study how the Hurst exponent $\alpha$ depends on the fraction $f$ of the total time $t$ remembered by non-Markovian random walkers that recall only the distant past. We find that otherwise nonpersistent random walkers switch to persistent behavior when inflicted with significant memory loss. Such memory losses induce the probability density function of the walker's position to undergo a transition from Gaussian to non-Gaussian. We interpret these findings of persistence in terms of a breakdown of self-regulation mechanisms and discuss their possible relevance to some of the burdensome behavioral and psychological symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figs, subm. to Phys. Rev. Let

Duration of agriculture and distance from the steppe predict the evolution of large-scale human societies in Afro-Eurasia

This is the final version. Available from Nature Research via the DOI in this record.Data availability: Data, R code, and sources used in these analyses are openly available at Harvard Dataverse https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/8TP2S7Understanding why large, complex human societies have emerged and persisted more readily in certain regions of the world than others is an issue of long-standing debate. Here we systematically test different hypotheses involving the social and ecological factors that may ultimately promote or inhibit the formation of large, complex human societies. We employ spatially explicit statistical analyses using data on the geographical and temporal distribution of the largest human groups over a 3000 year period of history. The results support the predictions of two complementary hypotheses indicating that large-scale societies developed more commonly in regions where i) agriculture has been practiced for longer (thus providing more time for the norms & institutions that facilitate large-scale organization to emerge), and ii) warfare was more intense (as proxied by distance from the Eurasian steppe), thus creating a stronger selection pressure for societies to scale up. We found no support for the influential idea that large-scale societies were more common in those regions naturally endowed with a higher potential for productive agriculture. Our study highlights how modern cultural evolutionary theory can be used to organize and synthesize alternative hypotheses and shed light on the ways ecological and social processes have interacted to shape the complex social world we live in today.European Union Horizon 2020Tricoastal FoundationJohn Templeton FoundationNational Institute for Mathematical and Biological SynthesisUniversity of Tennessee, KnoxvilleUS Army Research LaboratoryUS Army Research Offic