Abstract. The giant amoeba-like plasmodia of Physarum is able to solve the shortest path through a maze and construct near optimal functional networks between multiple, spatially distributed food-sources. These phenomena are interesting as they provide clues to potential biological computational algorithms that operate in a de-centralized, singlecelled system. We report here some factors that can affect path-finding through networks. These findings help us to understand more generally how the organism tries to establish an optimal set of paths in more complex environments and how this behaviour can be captured in relatively simple algorithms.
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