In this paper, a comprehensive overview of the Crow Search Algorithm (CSA) is introduced with detailed discussions, which is intended to keep researchers interested in swarm intelligence algorithms and optimization problems. CSA is a new swarm intelligence algorithm recently developed, which simulates crow behavior in storing excess food and retrieving it when needed. In the optimization theory, the crow is the searcher, the surrounding environment is the search space, and randomly storing the location of food is a feasible solution. Among all food locations, the location where the most food is stored is considered to be the global optimal solution, and the objective function is the amount of food. By simulating the intelligent behavior of crows, CSA tries to find optimal solutions to various optimization problems. It has gained a considerable interest worldwide since its advantages like simple implementation, a few numbers of parameters, flexibility, etc. This survey introduces a comprehensive variant of CSA, including hybrid, modified, and multi-objective versions. Furthermore, based on the analyzed papers published in the literature by some publishers such as IEEE, Elsevier, and Springer, the comprehensive application scenarios of CSA such as power, computer science, machine learning, civil engineering have also been reviewed. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of CSA have been discussed by conducting some comparative experiments with other similar published peers.

The whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is an intelligence-based technique that simulates the hunting behaviour of humpback whales in nature. In this article, an adaptation of the original version of the WOA is made for handling binary optimization problems. For this purpose, two transfer functions (S-shaped and V-shaped) are presented to map a continuous search space to a binary one. To illustrate the functionality and performance of the proposed binary whale optimization algorithm (bWOA), its results when applied on twenty-two benchmark functions, three engineering optimization problems and a real-world travelling salesman problem are found. Furthermore, the proposed bWOA is compared with five well-known metaheuristic algorithms. The experimental results show its superiority in comparison with other state-of-the-art metaheuristics in terms of accuracy and speed. Finally, Wilcoxon's rank-sum non-parametric statistical test is carried out at the 5% significance level to judge whether the results of the proposed algorithm differ from those of the other comparison algorithms in a statistically significant way.

Ant Lion Optimizer (ALO) is a recent novel algorithm developed in the literature that simulates the foraging behavior of a Ant lions. Recently, it has been applied to a huge number of optimization problems. It has many advantages: easy, scalable, flexible, and have a great balance between exploration and exploitation. In this comprehensive study, many publications using ALO have been collected and summarized. Firstly, we introduce an introduction about ALO. Secondly, we categorized the recent versions of ALO into 3 Categories mainly Modified, Hybrid and Multi-Objective. we also introduce the applications in which ALO has been applied such as power, Machine Learning, Image processing problems, Civil Engineering, Medical, etc. The review paper is ended by giving a conclusion of the main ALO foundations and providing some suggestions & possible future directions that can be investigated.