Letter to Editor
Does Physarum Polycephalum Follow Geodesic Lines on Polyhedrons?
Svetlana Lenskaya, Stepan Akinshin and Olga Starunova
We demonstrate that, when spanning two sources of attractants on polyhedrons, the slime mould Physarum polycephalum follows the geodesic lines. Truncated tetrahedron, truncated cubes and snub cubes of different sizes have been in 3D printed. Two sites on each polyhedron were chosen at random. The slime mould was inoculated in one site and an oat flake was placed in the target site. In 38 of 63 experiments the slime mould spanned to sites propagating along the geodesic lines with maximal deflection of c. 1 cm.
Keywords: Physarum polycephalum, archimedean solids, geodesic lines, chemotaxis