Monarch Butterfly Optimization

Abstract

Monarch butterfly optimization is inspired by the migration of monarch butterflies in nature: monarch butterflies in eastern North America migrate southward from northern United States and southern Canada to Mexico every summer/autumn. It is a new swarm intelligence metaheuristic algorithm, which is called monarch butterfly optimization (MBO). In MBO, the monarch butterfly population is ideally divided into two populations, one is located in southern Canada and northern United States (land 1), and the other is located in Mexico (land 2). We update the individuals in the population through migration and butterfly shape adjustment. To maintain the diversity of the population and minimize the fitness value, the total number of butterflies generated by the operation should be equal to the original population. In the experiment, MBO is compared with five metaheuristic algorithms through 38 test functions, especially applied to solve a large-scale 0-1 knapsack (KP) problem. Three groups of 15 large-scale 0-1 KP cases from 800 to 2000 dimensions are used to test. It is proved that MBO has strong advantages in solving global numerical optimization and engineering problems, which provides a reference for further discussion of MBO in the future.