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Lévy flights in Dobe Ju/’hoansi foraging patterns
| Title: | Lévy flights in Dobe Ju/’hoansi foraging patterns. |
 103 views 33 downloads |
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| Name(s): |
Liebovitch, Larry S., creator Brown, Clifford T., creator Glendon, Rachel, creator |
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| Type of Resource: | text | |
| Genre: | Article | |
| Issuance: | single unit | |
| Date Issued: | 2007-02-01 | |
| Publisher: | Springer | |
| Language(s): | English | |
| Identifier: | 165800 (digitool), FADT165800 (IID), fau:2612 (fedora), 10.1007/s10745-006-9083-4 (doi) | |
| FAU Department/College: | Department of Psychology Charles E. Schmidt College of Science | |
| Note(s): |
The authors analyzed data on Ju/’hoansi hunter–gatherer foraging patterns and found that their movements between residence camps can be modeled as a Lévy flight. The step lengths of their movements scale as a power law with an exponent μ=1.97. Their wait times (residence times) at the camps also scale as a power law (μ=1.45). A Lévy flight with step lengths μ=2 is an optimal search pattern for scarce, randomly located targets; thus, the Ju/’hoansi foraging pattern may approach an optimal search in this area of sparse plant and animal resources. These findings affect the application of optimal foraging theory to humans in anthropology and archaeology because they alter the way in which search and travel times should be quantified. These results may also carry implications for the study of other patterns of human movement, such as demic diffusion and migration. This manuscript is a version of an article published in Human Ecology v. 35, no. 1 (February 2007) p. 129–138 http://www.springerlink.com/content/tu8j2353q22u3472/ |
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| Subject(s): |
Hunting and gathering societies--statistical methods Khoisan (African people) Forage Human Migration Patterns Human ecology--Africa Human settlements--Mathematical models Search theory |
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| Persistent Link to This Record: | http://purl.flvc.org/fau/165800 | |
| Links: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9083-4 | |
| Restrictions on Access: | ©2007 Springer Netherlands | |
| Host Institution: | FAU |
