Journal
ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR
Volume 83, Issue 5, Pages 1225-1229Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.02.014
Keywords
Diomedea exulans; foraging; Levy flight pattern; wandering albatross
Categories
Funding
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Viswanathan et al.'s (1996,Nature,381,413-415) analysis of the flight patterns of the wandering albatross, Diomedea exulans, led to an explosion of interest in biological Levy flights and to an accumulation of evidence that a wide variety of animals have movement patterns that can be approximated by Levy flights. Subsequently, it became apparent that the analysis of Viswanathan et al. ( 1996) was seriously flawed. Attributing Levy flights to wandering albatrosses now appeared to be an error that nevertheless served as the basis for new insights into animal behaviour. Here I revisit the issue in light of recent evidence that fishy-scented odours facilitate prey location in these birds. Using a simple mathematical argument I show that the touchdown locations (positions of the located odour sources) of odour-mediated anemotactic (upwind) flight patterns form a Levy 'dust'. Levy flight patterns are therefore predicted to be an emergent property of olfactory searching in turbulent environments. In accordance with the reanalysis of the empirical data, flight lengths are predicted to be gamma distributed when prey lying in nearby crosswind locations can occasionally be detected by purely visual means. These predictions are supported by the results of numerical simulations. The finding invites a further re-examination of the flight patterns of the wandering albatross and provides new insights into the movement patterns of many animals that can locate odour sources in turbulent environments. (C) 2012 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available