Rebuilding Iberian motorways with slime mould

Abstract

Plasmodium of a cellular slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a unique living substrate proved to be efficient in solving many computational problems with natural spatial parallelism. The plasmodium solves a problem represented by a configuration of source of nutrients by building an efficient foraging and intra-cellular transportation network. The transportation networks developed by the plasmodium are similar to transport networks built by social insects and simulated trails in multi-agent societies. In the paper we are attempting to answer the question "How close plasmodium of P. polycephalum approximates man-made motorway networks in Spain and Portugal, and what are the differences between existing motorway structure and plasmodium network of protoplasmic tubes?". We cut agar plates in a shape of Iberian peninsula, place oat flakes at the sites of major urban areas and analyse the foraging network developed. We compare the plasmodium network with principle motorways and also analyse man-made and plasmodium networks in a framework of planar proximity graphs.