Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Reynolds, Andy
• Ceccon, Eliane
• Baldauf, Cristina
• Karina Medeiros, Tassia
• Miramontes, Octavio
• Smith, Alastair

Titel

Lévy foraging patterns of rural humans

Ist Teil von

• PloS one, 2018-06, Vol.13 (6), p.e0199099-e0199099

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Movement patterns resembling Lévy walks, often attributed to the execution of an advantageous probabilistic searching strategy, are found in a wide variety of organisms, from cells to human hunter-gatherers. It has been suggested that such movement patterns may be fundamental to how humans interact and experience the world and that they may have arisen early in our genus with the evolution of a hunting and gathering lifestyle. Here we show that Lévy walks are evident in the Me'Phaa of Mexico, in Brazilian Cariri farmers and in Amazonian farmers when gathering firewood, wild fruit and nuts. Around 50% of the search patterns resemble Lévy walks and these are characterized by Lévy exponents close to 1.7. The other search patterns more closely resemble bi-phasic walks. We suggest potential generative mechanisms for the occurrence of these ubiquitous Lévy walks which can be used to guide future studies on human mobility. We show that frequent excursions and meanderings from pre-existing trails can account for our observations.