Searching strategy models: is Lévy walk the answer?

Abstract

In nature, many organisms must cope with the problem of finding mates, food and shelter. The strategy of search that drives an organism can reveal important aspects of its behavior; models have been proposed to address this problem. Lévy walk is the most discussed model and it has some empirical support. Our aim was to compare straight line displacements against Lévy walk and Brownian motion in terms of survival and probability of reward. Our results show that straight line displacements have better performance in all environments we created. We discuss that straight line movements should be considered more probable as a search strategy considering the arguments that support Lévy walk, however, it is not seen like a strategy.