IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0199099.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lévy foraging patterns of rural humans

Author

Listed:
  • Andy Reynolds
  • Eliane Ceccon
  • Cristina Baldauf
  • Tassia Karina Medeiros
  • Octavio Miramontes

Abstract

Movement patterns resembling Lévy walks, often attributed to the execution of an advantageous probabilistic searching strategy, are found in a wide variety of organisms, from cells to human hunter-gatherers. It has been suggested that such movement patterns may be fundamental to how humans interact and experience the world and that they may have arisen early in our genus with the evolution of a hunting and gathering lifestyle. Here we show that Lévy walks are evident in the Me’Phaa of Mexico, in Brazilian Cariri farmers and in Amazonian farmers when gathering firewood, wild fruit and nuts. Around 50% of the search patterns resemble Lévy walks and these are characterized by Lévy exponents close to 1.7. The other search patterns more closely resemble bi-phasic walks. We suggest potential generative mechanisms for the occurrence of these ubiquitous Lévy walks which can be used to guide future studies on human mobility. We show that frequent excursions and meanderings from pre-existing trails can account for our observations.

Suggested Citation

  • Andy Reynolds & Eliane Ceccon & Cristina Baldauf & Tassia Karina Medeiros & Octavio Miramontes, 2018. "Lévy foraging patterns of rural humans," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(6), pages 1-16, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0199099
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199099
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199099
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199099&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0199099?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David W. Sims & Emily J. Southall & Nicolas E. Humphries & Graeme C. Hays & Corey J. A. Bradshaw & Jonathan W. Pitchford & Alex James & Mohammed Z. Ahmed & Andrew S. Brierley & Mark A. Hindell & David, 2008. "Scaling laws of marine predator search behaviour," Nature, Nature, vol. 451(7182), pages 1098-1102, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rutten, Philip & Lees, Michael H. & Klous, Sander & Sloot, Peter M.A., 2021. "Intermittent and persistent movement patterns of dance event visitors in large sporting venues," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 563(C).
    2. Toman, Kellan & Voulgarakis, Nikolaos K., 2022. "Stochastic pursuit-evasion curves for foraging dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 597(C).
    3. Shah, Yawer H. & Palatella, Luigi & Mahmoodi, Korosh & Santonocito, Orazio S. & Morelli, Mariangela & Ferri, Gianmarco & Mazzanti, Chiara M. & Grigolini, Paolo & West, Bruce J., 2024. "Cell motility in cancer, crucial events, criticality, and Lévy walks," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ferreira, A.S. & Raposo, E.P. & Viswanathan, G.M. & da Luz, M.G.E., 2012. "The influence of the environment on Lévy random search efficiency: Fractality and memory effects," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(11), pages 3234-3246.
    2. Bi, Zhimin & Liu, Shutang & Ouyang, Miao, 2022. "Spatial dynamics of a fractional predator-prey system with time delay and Allee effect," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    3. Pauline Formaglio & Marina E. Wosniack & Raphael M. Tromer & Jaderson G. Polli & Yuri B. Matos & Hang Zhong & Ernesto P. Raposo & Marcos G. E. Luz & Rogerio Amino, 2023. "Plasmodium sporozoite search strategy to locate hotspots of blood vessel invasion," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    4. LaScala-Gruenewald, Diana E. & Mehta, Rohan S. & Liu, Yu & Denny, Mark W., 2019. "Sensory perception plays a larger role in foraging efficiency than heavy-tailed movement strategies," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 404(C), pages 69-82.
    5. Toman, Kellan & Voulgarakis, Nikolaos K., 2022. "Stochastic pursuit-evasion curves for foraging dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 597(C).
    6. Cao, Jiajia & Zhou, Yanbin & Wei, Kun, 2024. "Modeling ants’ walks in patrolling multiple resources using stochastic approximation partial momentum refreshment," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 637(C).
    7. Danish A. Ahmed & Sergei V. Petrovskii & Paulo F. C. Tilles, 2018. "The “Lévy or Diffusion” Controversy: How Important Is the Movement Pattern in the Context of Trapping?," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 6(5), pages 1-27, May.
    8. Nauta, Johannes & Simoens, Pieter & Khaluf, Yara, 2022. "Group size and resource fractality drive multimodal search strategies: A quantitative analysis on group foraging," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 590(C).
    9. E P Raposo & F Bartumeus & M G E da Luz & P J Ribeiro-Neto & T A Souza & G M Viswanathan, 2011. "How Landscape Heterogeneity Frames Optimal Diffusivity in Searching Processes," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-8, November.
    10. Andrea Censi & Andrew D Straw & Rosalyn W Sayaman & Richard M Murray & Michael H Dickinson, 2013. "Discriminating External and Internal Causes for Heading Changes in Freely Flying Drosophila," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-14, February.
    11. Pierpaolo Andriani & Bill McKelvey, 2009. "Perspective ---From Gaussian to Paretian Thinking: Causes and Implications of Power Laws in Organizations," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(6), pages 1053-1071, December.
    12. Franziska Matthäus & Mario S Mommer & Tine Curk & Jure Dobnikar, 2011. "On the Origin and Characteristics of Noise-Induced Lévy Walks of E. Coli," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(4), pages 1-8, April.
    13. Gaël Kermarrec, 2020. "On Estimating the Hurst Parameter from Least-Squares Residuals. Case Study: Correlated Terrestrial Laser Scanner Range Noise," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-23, April.
    14. Sepideh Bazazi & Frederic Bartumeus & Joseph J Hale & Iain D Couzin, 2012. "Intermittent Motion in Desert Locusts: Behavioural Complexity in Simple Environments," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(5), pages 1-10, May.
    15. Masato S Abe & Masakazu Shimada, 2015. "Lévy Walks Suboptimal under Predation Risk," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-16, November.
    16. Reynolds, A.M., 2011. "On the origin of bursts and heavy tails in animal dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(2), pages 245-249.
    17. Bi, Zhimin & Liu, Shutang & Ouyang, Miao, 2022. "Three-dimensional pattern dynamics of a fractional predator-prey model with cross-diffusion and herd behavior," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 421(C).
    18. Danish A Ahmed & Ali R Ansari & Mudassar Imran & Kamal Dingle & Michael B Bonsall, 2021. "Mechanistic modelling of COVID-19 and the impact of lockdowns on a short-time scale," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(10), pages 1-20, October.
    19. Alka A Potdar & Junhwan Jeon & Alissa M Weaver & Vito Quaranta & Peter T Cummings, 2010. "Human Mammary Epithelial Cells Exhibit a Bimodal Correlated Random Walk Pattern," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(3), pages 1-10, March.
    20. Boschetti, Fabio & Vanderklift, Mathew A., 2015. "How the movement characteristics of large marine predators influence estimates of their abundance," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 313(C), pages 223-236.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0199099. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.