Category: Ecology

Summary: Mapping how the optimal Levy-flight search exponent shifts as resource renewal changes the balance between destructive exploration and local revisiting.

Levy-flight foraging is often argued to be advantageous when targets are sparse and do not immediately replenish, but renewable resources change that tradeoff. This experiment asks how the optimal Levy exponent depends on the resource renewal rate, and whether faster renewal pushes the best strategy toward more local, Brownian-like search.

The model simulates a single forager on a patchy two-dimensional landscape with renewable resources, sweeping both the Levy exponent and the renewal rate. It then maps the boundary between sustainable harvesting and exploitation collapse.

That turns a classic optimal-foraging question into a phase-diagram problem. The experiment aims to show whether there is a sharp renewal-driven transition in the best search strategy rather than just a gradual shift.

Method: Agent-based simulations of a Levy forager on a 2D torus with renewable patchy resources, sweeping search exponent and renewal rate.

What is measured: Optimal Levy exponent, sustainability versus collapse boundary, dependence on resource renewal rate, and patch-density effects.