Successful navigation through a complicated and evolving environment is a fundamental task carried out by an enormous range of organisms, with migration paths staggering in their length and intricacy. Selecting a path requires the detection, processing and integration of a myriad of cues drawn from the surrounding environment and in many instances it is the intrinsic orientation of the environment that provides a valuable navigational aid.
In this talk I will describe the use of transport models to describe migration in oriented environments, and demonstrate the scaling approaches that allow us to derive macroscopic models for movement.
I will illustrate the methods through a number of apposite examples, including the migration of cells in the extracellular matrix, the macroscopic growth of brain tumours and the movement of wolves in boreal forest.