An adaptive dung beetle optimizer based on an elastic annealing mechanism and its application to numerical problems and optimization of Reed–Muller logic circuits

• Proposes an adaptive dung beetle optimizer (ADBO) that integrates an elastic annealing mechanism to overcome premature convergence and poor accuracy. • Introduces a nonlinear decreasing convergence factor to better balance global exploration and local exploitation. • Applies a greedy difference optimization strategy to enhance population diversity and global search capability. • Validates ADBO on CEC 2017, CEC 2022, and MCNC benchmark circuits, demonstrating superior performance over existing approaches.