Searching strategy of slime mold and its mathematical model

Abstract

The plasmodium of the true slime mold, physarum polycephalum is a large amoeboid organism, and it can sense environmental information and change its behavior depending on the situations. For example, when the expanding front touches the wall, other part will start to move and become a new front in a few minutes. It seems physarum transmits information from one side to another. This property must be important for the efficient food searching. We found that slime mold can change the searching strategy by observing the slime mold in the branching lanes. We made a mathematical model of physarum expanding to explain this behavior. The pressure of protoplasm plays a role as information in our model. Our model reproduces fundamental characteristics of the front expanding.