The adjustment-deployment dilemma in organism´s behaviour: Theoretical characterization and minimal model

Intermittent behaviour (movement interspersed with pauses) is a broad biological phenomenon which is observed in organisms ranging from protozoans to mammals. We depict a coordination problem that is part of the general structure of intermittent behaviour: the adjustment-deployment dilemma. This dilemma captures the difficult compromise between the time spent in adjusting a response and the time used to deploy it: the adjustment process improves fitness with time but we also assume that such fitness decays with time (e.g. environmental conditions change), if you spend very little time adjusting the fitness of the action is poor, but if you spent too much time before deployment the result is no longer valid. We provide a mathematical model of the dilemma, general enough to be applicable to different instances of it. An optimal solution is then simulated and analysed, the result shows that the optimal strategy is the one that maximizes the number of interactions with the environment. We explore the biological significance of such results and provide a minimal mechanism capable to instantiate an optimal solution. We conclude with a summary of the contributions of the present work and suggest potentially fruitful areas of future work.