Category: Ecology

Summary: Testing whether intermediate run persistence best balances exploration and survival in landscapes with heavy-tailed refuge lengths and lethal gaps.

Run-and-tumble motion is a standard model for microbial and active-particle search, but survival can depend strongly on the structure of the environment. This experiment places the walker in one-dimensional landscapes with refuge segments of heavy-tailed length separated by lethal hazard gaps and asks which persistence time gives the best survival-exploration tradeoff.

The simulation compares short, medium, and long persistence regimes while tracking how often trajectories remain protected, overshoot refuges, or get trapped near boundaries. The central question is whether an interior optimum emerges because both overly diffusive and overly persistent motion perform poorly for different reasons.

That makes the problem more specific than generic transport in disorder. It focuses on how refuge geometry and mortality interact with active persistence.

Method: Repeated stochastic run-and-tumble simulations in alternating refuge-hazard landscapes with heavy-tailed refuge lengths.

What is measured: Survival probability, exploration or transport score, refuge occupancy, hazard exposure, and persistence value with best performance.