Desert Ants Learn Vibration and Magnetic Landmarks

Buehlmann, Cornelia; Hansson, Bill S.; Knaden, Markus

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033117

Cited by 52 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The fact that these paths are idiosyncratic suggests that ants are guided by individually learnt cues rather than social cues such as pheromones. In fact, we know route guidance is based mainly on visual cues (Collett, 1992;Harrison et al, 1989;Reid et al, 2011;Wehner et al, 1996) but can also include information about magnetic anomalies (Buehlmann et al, 2012), odour (Steck et al, 2009) and wind direction (Wolf and Wehner, 2000). If experienced ants are displaced from one location on their route to another (e.g.…”

Section: A Simple Model Of Ant Visual Route Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insect navigation: do ants live in the now?

Graham

Mangan

2015

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Visual navigation is a critical behaviour for many animals, and it has been particularly well studied in ants. Decades of ant navigation research have uncovered many ways in which efficient navigation can be implemented in small brains. For example, ants show us how visual information can drive navigation via procedural rather than map-like instructions. Two recent behavioural observations highlight interesting adaptive ways in which ants implement visual guidance. Firstly, it has been shown that the systematic nest searches of ants can be biased by recent experience of familiar scenes. Secondly, ants have been observed to show temporary periods of confusion when asked to repeat a route segment, even if that route segment is very familiar. Taken together, these results indicate that the navigational decisions of ants take into account their recent experiences as well as the currently perceived environment.

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Section: A Simple Model Of Ant Visual Route Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insect navigation: do ants live in the now?

Graham

Mangan

2015

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…To a lesser extent, self-induced image flow can contribute to the odometer (Ronacher and Wehner, 1995). Besides vector navigation, several additional routines for orientation have been found in Cataglyphis (such as wind cues or visual, olfactory, tactile or even vibrational and magnetic landmarks), forming the ant's navigational toolkit (Wehner, 2009;Wolf and Wehner, 2005;Steck et al, 2011;Seidl and Wehner, 2006;Buehlmann et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to find home backwards? Navigation during rearward homing of Cataglyphis fortis desert ants

Pfeffer

Wittlinger

2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Cataglyphis ants are renowned for their impressive navigation skills, which have been studied in numerous experiments during forward locomotion. However, the ants' navigational performance during backward homing when dragging large food loads has not been investigated until now. During backward locomotion, the odometer has to deal with unsteady motion and irregularities in inter-leg coordination. The legs' sensory feedback during backward walking is not just a simple reversal of the forward stepping movements: compared with forward homing, ants are facing towards the opposite direction during backward dragging. Hence, the compass system has to cope with a flipped celestial view (in terms of the polarization pattern and the position of the sun) and an inverted retinotopic image of the visual panorama and landmark environment. The same is true for wind and olfactory cues. In this study we analyze for the first time backwardhoming ants and evaluate their navigational performance in channel and open field experiments. Backward-homing Cataglyphis fortis desert ants show remarkable similarities in the performance of homing compared with forward-walking ants. Despite the numerous challenges emerging for the navigational system during backward walking, we show that ants perform quite well in our experiments. Direction and distance gauging was comparable to that of the forwardwalking control groups. Interestingly, we found that backward-homing ants often put down the food item and performed foodless search loops around the left food item. These search loops were mainly centred around the drop-off position (and not around the nest position), and increased in length the closer the ants came to their fictive nest site.

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“…In ants, information appears to be exploited by separate guidance systems rather than being integrated into a unified representation of space [2]. The ant navigational toolkit is well known for encompassing three main strategies: path integration (PI), systematic search and the use of learnt information from different sensory systems [3][4][5][6][7]-mainly views. Based on a celestial compass and an inbuilt stepcounter, PI continuously provides egocentric information about the direction and distance to the nest and enables the foraging ant to return to it by the shortest direct track [8,9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Backtracking behaviour in lost ants: an additional strategy in their navigational toolkit

et al. 2013

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Ants use multiple sources of information to navigate, but do not integrate all this information into a unified representation of the world. Rather, the available information appears to serve three distinct main navigational systems: path integration, systematic search and the use of learnt informationmainly via vision. Here, we report on an additional behaviour that suggests a supplemental system in the ant's navigational toolkit: 'backtracking'. Homing ants, having almost reached their nest but, suddenly displaced to unfamiliar areas, did not show the characteristic undirected headings of systematic searches. Instead, these ants backtracked in the compass direction opposite to the path that they had just travelled. The ecological function of this behaviour is clear as we show it increases the chances of returning to familiar terrain. Importantly, the mechanistic implications of this behaviour stress an extra level of cognitive complexity in ant navigation. Our results imply: (i) the presence of a type of 'memory of the current trip' allowing lost ants to take into account the familiar view recently experienced, and (ii) direct sharing of information across different navigational systems. We propose a revised architecture of the ant's navigational toolkit illustrating how the different systems may interact to produce adaptive behaviours.

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Desert Ants Learn Vibration and Magnetic Landmarks

Cited by 52 publications

References 28 publications

Insect navigation: do ants live in the now?

Insect navigation: do ants live in the now?

How to find home backwards? Navigation during rearward homing of Cataglyphis fortis desert ants

Backtracking behaviour in lost ants: an additional strategy in their navigational toolkit

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