Slime mould evaluation of Australian motorways

Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is renowned for spanning spatially distributed sources of nutrients with a transport-wise optimal network of protoplasmic tubes. We explore analogy between slime mould transport of nutrients in its protoplasmic network and vehicular transport in a motorway network and evaluate how well the slime mould approximates major road network of Australia. We represent major urban area by oat flakes, inoculate plasmodium of P. polycephalum in Sydney and analyse protoplasmic network developed. We compare the slime mould networks with well-known proximity graphs and man-made motorway network, and speculate on how a transport network in Australia might re-structure, from ‘slime mould's point of view’, in a response to major disasters.