Abstract Klages:

There is currently a controversial discussion in the biophysical literature about the hypothesis that animal migration can be understood in terms of Levy flights, which define a specific class of stochastic processes in the mathematics literature. This statistics can in turn be shown to represent an optimal search strategy if certain conditions on the target distributions are fulfilled. In my talk I will briefly review important literature highlighting this problem. The presentation should set the scene for the subsequent two talks, which will elaborate on fundamental aspects related to these questions.