An artificial bee colony algorithm for the leaf-constrained minimum spanning tree problem

Given an undirected, connected, weighted graph, the leaf-constrained minimum spanning tree (LCMST) problem seeks on this graph a spanning tree of minimum weight among all the spanning trees of the graph that have at least ℓℓ leaves. In this paper, we have proposed an artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm for the LCMST problem. The ABC algorithm is a new metaheuristic approach inspired by intelligent foraging behavior of honeybee swarm. We have compared the performance of our ABC approach against the best approaches reported in the literature. Computational results demonstrate the superiority of the new ABC approach over all the other approaches. The new approach obtained better quality solutions in shorter time.