N_mem

The luciferin level of the glowworm is equal to the maximum concentration value encountered in the past N_mem seconds. The choice of N_mem is seen to have a considerable effect on the algorithm performance as shown in Figure. The value of N_mem needs to be chosen such that it is large enough to remember the maximum concentration which was measured close to the glowworm's current position but small enough to ensure that the maximum concentration was not measured far from the current location of the glowworm. The maximum amplitude of the concentration within the patch decreases away from the source, but the concentration measured at any instant can be misleading. This is the reason for the delayed convergence for low N_mem values.

Figure: Algorithm performance with variation in N_mem.