Flow Modes Provide a Quantification of Physarum Network Peristalsis

22 Pages Posted: 14 Nov 2022

See all articles by Ryan Wilkinson

Ryan Wilkinson

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Mathematics

Matthew Koziol

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Mathematics

Karen Alim

Technische Universität München (TUM)

Marcus Roper

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Mathematics

Abstract

Physarum polycephalum is a foraging, network-forming organism known for its ability to make complex decisions and maintain memory of past stimuli without use of a complex nervous system. Self-organized peristaltic flows within the network transport nutrients throughout the organism and initiate locomotion and morphological changes. A key step in understanding P. polycephalum’s ability to change behavior is therefore forming descriptors of this peristaltic flow. Here, we develop a dynamic network-based method for describing organism-wide patterns of tube contractions from videos of P. polycephalum. Our tool provides robust readouts of the diversity of global modes of tube contraction that could occur within a given network, based on its geometry and topology, and sensitively identifies when global peristaltic patterns emerge and dissipate.

Keywords: Slime Mold, Physarum polycephalum, Behavior, Biological Network, Peristalsis, Physical Modeling, Spectral Analysis, Stokes Equations, Singular Value Decomposition, Graph Laplacian, Linear Map, Image Analysis

Suggested Citation

Wilkinson, Ryan and Koziol, Matthew and Alim, Karen and Roper, Marcus, Flow Modes Provide a Quantification of Physarum Network Peristalsis. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4267724 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4267724

Ryan Wilkinson (Contact Author)

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Mathematics ( email )

Matthew Koziol

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Mathematics ( email )

Karen Alim

Technische Universität München (TUM) ( email )

Marcus Roper

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Mathematics ( email )

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