The world's colonization and trade routes formation as imitated by slime mould

Adamatzky, Andrew

Abstract

The plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is renowned for spanning sources of nutrients with networks of protoplasmic tubes. The networks transport nutrients and metabolites across the plasmodium's body. To imitate a hypothetical colonization of the world and the formation of major transportation routes we cut continents from agar plates arranged in Petri dishes or on the surface of a three-dimensional globe, represent positions of selected metropolitan areas with oat flakes and inoculate the plasmodium in one of the metropolitan areas. The plasmodium propagates towards the sources of nutrients, spans them with its network of protoplasmic tubes and even crosses bare substrate between the continents. From the laboratory experiments we derive weighted Physarum graphs, analyze their structure, compare them with the basic proximity graphs and generalized graphs derived from the Silk Road and the Asia Highway networks. © 2012 World Scientific Publishing Company.

• Journal Article Type: Review
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2012
• Deposit Date: Sep 20, 2012
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 12, 2016
• Journal: International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos
• Print ISSN: 0218-1274
• Electronic ISSN: 1793-6551
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 8
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218127412300285
• Keywords: biological transport networks, unconventional computing, slime mould
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/945039
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0218127412300285
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 22, 8, 2012, 26 Pages. Article DOI: 10.1142/S0218127412300285 © World Scientific Publishing Company, http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0218127412300285
• Contract Date: Apr 12, 2016