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A power law in the exploratory behavior of the Physarum plasmodium

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Abstract

The plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is a unicellular giant amoeba that grows up to macroscopic scale under appropriate condition, and is known to its computational abilities. In this study, we tried to observe the long-term exploratory behavior of the plasmodium in an open environment and to evaluate its efficiency. For this purpose, we developed an experimental system with an extendable substrate. As a result of the experiment, we found that the frequency distribution of the speed of plasmodial locomotion is fitted by power function. By simulation, we further tried to estimate the efficiency of the exploration implemented with the patterns from the plasmodium, and confirmed that it is actually effective.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Defense Academy of Japan, 1-10-20 Hashirimizu, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, 239-8686, Japan

    Tomohiro Shirakawa, Hiroshi Sato & Miharu Nishida

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  1. Tomohiro Shirakawa
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  2. Hiroshi Sato
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  3. Miharu Nishida
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Correspondence to Tomohiro Shirakawa.

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Shirakawa, T., Sato, H. & Nishida, M. A power law in the exploratory behavior of the Physarum plasmodium. Artif Life Robotics 21, 195–200 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-016-0269-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-016-0269-6

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