  In recent years, a plethora of new metaheuristic algorithms have explored
different sources of inspiration within the biological and natural worlds. This
nature-inspired approach to algorithm design has been widely criticised. A
notable issue is the tendency for authors to use terminology that is derived
from the domain of inspiration, rather than the broader domains of
metaheuristics and optimisation. This makes it difficult to both comprehend how
these algorithms work and understand their relationships to other
metaheuristics. This paper attempts to address this issue, at least to some
extent, by providing accessible descriptions of the most cited nature-inspired
algorithms published in the last twenty years. It also discusses commonalities
between these algorithms and more classical nature-inspired metaheuristics such
as evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimisation, and finishes with a
discussion of future directions for the field.
