Intermittent search strategies

Abstract

This review examines intermittent target search strategies, which combine phases of slow motion, allowing the searcher to detect the target, and phases of fast motion during which targets cannot be detected. We first show that intermittent search strategies are actually widely observed at various scales. At the macroscopic scale, this is for example the case of animals looking for food ; at the microscopic scale, intermittent transport patterns are involved in reaction pathway of DNA binding proteins as well as in intracellular transport. Second, we introduce generic stochastic models, which show that intermittent strategies are efficient strategies, which enable to minimize the search time. This suggests that the intrinsic efficiency of intermittent search strategies could justify their frequent observation in nature. Last, beyond these modeling aspects, we propose that intermittent strategies could be used also in a broader context to design and accelerate search processes.

Anomalous Fluctuation Relations

“…For our cell experiment, both the experimental data and the theoretical modeling suggest that there exists a slow diffusion on short time scales, whereas the long-time motion is much faster, which resembles intermittency as discussed in Ref. [95]. Hence, the results on anomalous cell migration presented above might be biologically relevant in view of suitably optimized foraging strategies.…”

“…There is an ongoing debate about whether biological organisms such as, e.g., albatrosses, marine predators and fruit flies have managed to mimimize the search time for food in a way that matches to optimizing search strategies in terms of stochastic processes; see Refs. [72,95] and further references therein. In particular, it has been argued that Lévy flights are superior to Brownian motion in order to find sparsely, randomly distributed, replenishing food sources [95].…”

“…[72,95] and further references therein. In particular, it has been argued that Lévy flights are superior to Brownian motion in order to find sparsely, randomly distributed, replenishing food sources [95]. However, it was also shown that in other situations intermittent dynamics is more efficient than pure Lévy motion [95].…”

“…In particular, it has been argued that Lévy flights are superior to Brownian motion in order to find sparsely, randomly distributed, replenishing food sources [95]. However, it was also shown that in other situations intermittent dynamics is more efficient than pure Lévy motion [95]. For our cell experiment, both the experimental data and the theoretical modeling suggest that there exists a slow diffusion on short time scales, whereas the long-time motion is much faster, which resembles intermittency as discussed in Ref.…”

Walk dimension for light in complex disordered media

“…Examples include heat transport [1], animal foraging [2], human travel [3], molecular diffusion [4], and the propagation of waves in random media [5,6]. A fundamental aspect of random walks in disordered media is the scaling property of the dynamics, which is commonly expressed by the following type of propagator [7,8]:…”