Desert ants (Melophorus bagoti) navigating with robustness to distortions of the natural panorama

Schwarz, Sebastian; Julle-Daniere, Eglantine; Morin, Luce; Schultheiss, Patrick; Wystrach, Antoine; Ives, J E; Chen, Ken

doi:10.1007/s00040-014-0364-4

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…It should be noted that this effect was weak ( Fig. 1d), possibly because the alteration of the scene was not obvious enough (Schwarz et al, 2014).…”

Section: Ants Still Recognise Terrestrial Cues While Walking Backwardmentioning

confidence: 95%

How do backward-walking ants (Cataglyphis velox) cope with navigational uncertainty?

et al. 2020

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Current opinion in insect navigation assumes that animals need to align with the goal direction to recognise familiar views and approach it. Yet, ants sometimes drag heavy food items backward to the nest and it is still unclear to what extent they rely on visual memories while doing so. In this study displacement experiments and alterations of the visual scenery reveal that ants do indeed recognise and use the learnt visual scenery to guide their path towards the nest while walking backward. In addition, the results show that backward ants estimate their directional uncertainty by integrating multiple cues such as visual familiarity, the state of their path integrator and the time spent backward. A simple mechanical model based on repulsive and attractive visual memories captures the results and explains how visual navigation can be performed backwards.

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“…It should be noted that this effect was weak ( Fig. 1d), possibly because the alteration of the scene was not obvious enough (Schwarz et al, 2014).…”

Section: Ants Still Recognise Terrestrial Cues While Walking Backwardmentioning

confidence: 95%

How do backward-walking ants (Cataglyphis velox) cope with navigational uncertainty?

et al. 2020

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“…Zero-vector ants have been used very often in experiments (e.g. Fukushi and Wehner, 2004;Narendra, 2007;Graham and Cheng, 2009a,b;Collett, 2014;Legge et al, 2014;Wystrach et al, 2011bSchwarz et al, 2014Schwarz et al, , 2017 but zero-vector bees only rarely (Wehner et al, 1990(Wehner et al, , 1996, probably because the visual panorama available to ants is more easily manipulated, and ants are more easily tracked upon release. Bees have, however, been tracked with radar (e.g.…”

Section: Usefulness Of the Methods For Studying View-based Navigation mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In view-based navigation, by contrast, the insects capture panoramic views of the landscape and then compare these remembered views with current views in order to orient in certain directions or move toward certain destinations (Zeil et al, 2003(Zeil et al, , 2014Zeil, 2012;Cheng, 2012;Collett et al, 2013;Wystrach et al, 2016). Viewbased navigation is robust under a variety of circumstances (Baddeley et al, , 2012Wystrach and Graham, 2012;Schwarz et al, 2014) and even allows successful homing from places that the insects themselves have never visited but from where at least some familiar landscape features can be seen, albeit from new perspectives (Dyer, 1991(Dyer, , 1996Dyer et al, 1993;Durier et al, 2004;Collett et al, 2007;Graham et al, 2010;Narendra et al, 2013;Zeil et al, 2014;Cheung et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Honeybees use the skyline in orientation

Towne

Ritrovato

Esposto

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Biology

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In view-based navigation, animals acquire views of the landscape from various locations and then compare the learned views with current views in order to orient in certain directions or move toward certain destinations. One landscape feature of great potential usefulness in view-based navigation is the skyline, the silhouette of terrestrial objects against the sky, as it is distant, relatively stable and easy to detect. The skyline has been shown to be important in the view-based navigation of ants, but no flying insect has yet been shown definitively to use the skyline in this way. Here, we show that honeybees do indeed orient using the skyline. A feeder was surrounded with an artificial replica of the natural skyline there, and the bees' departures toward the nest were recorded from above with a video camera under overcast skies (to eliminate celestial cues). When the artificial skyline was rotated, the bees' departures were rotated correspondingly, showing that the bees oriented by the artificial skyline alone. We discuss these findings in the context of the likely importance of the skyline in long-range homing in bees, the likely importance of altitude in using the skyline, the likely role of ultraviolet light in detecting the skyline, and what we know about the bees' ability to resolve skyline features.

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“…Image comparisons revealed variability across trees and locations, but overall, the information necessary to retrieve the nest direction using a terrestrial visual compass strategy ( Wystrach et al, 2011b ; Baddeley et al, 2012 ) is available. As noted earlier ( Zeil et al, 2003 ; Schwarz et al, 2014 ), changes in height have little impact on the information available in these panoramic views. This stable nest-ward minimum in panorama information may also be used by bees and wasps as they ascend in height during their learning flights ( Zeil, 1993a , b ; Stürzl et al, 2016 ; Murray and Zeil, 2017 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Our results suggest this ability extends to elevation-based displacements. The ability to orient to familiar landmarks after vertical displacement has been previously shown in the desert ant M. bagoti ( Schwarz et al, 2014 ), a species that forages on the ground almost exclusively ( Schultheiss and Nooten, 2013 ). It is currently unknown if foragers include travelling vertically up the nest tree in their learning walks or if on their first trip onto the foraging tree they perform a vertical form of turn back behaviour as is observed with ants on the ground ( Nicholson et al, 1999 ; Graham and Collett, 2006 ; Müller and Wehner, 2010 ; Fleischmann et al, 2016 , 2017 ) and has also been reported in bees ( Lehrer, 1991 , 1993 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

The View from the Trees: Nocturnal Bull Ants, Myrmecia midas, Use the Surrounding Panorama While Descending from Trees

et al. 2018

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Solitary foraging ants commonly use visual cues from their environment for navigation. Foragers are known to store visual scenes from the surrounding panorama for later guidance to known resources and to return successfully back to the nest. Several ant species travel not only on the ground, but also climb trees to locate resources. The navigational information that guides animals back home during their descent, while their body is perpendicular to the ground, is largely unknown. Here, we investigate in a nocturnal ant, Myrmecia midas, whether foragers travelling down a tree use visual information to return home. These ants establish nests at the base of a tree on which they forage and in addition, they also forage on nearby trees. We collected foragers and placed them on the trunk of the nest tree or a foraging tree in multiple compass directions. Regardless of the displacement location, upon release ants immediately moved to the side of the trunk facing the nest during their descent. When ants were released on non-foraging trees near the nest, displaced foragers again travelled around the tree to the side facing the nest. All the displaced foragers reached the correct side of the tree well before reaching the ground. However, when the terrestrial cues around the tree were blocked, foragers were unable to orient correctly, suggesting that the surrounding panorama is critical to successful orientation on the tree. Through analysis of panoramic pictures, we show that views acquired at the base of the foraging tree nest can provide reliable nest-ward orientation up to 1.75 m above the ground. We discuss, how animals descending from trees compare their current scene to a memorised scene and report on the similarities in visually guided behaviour while navigating on the ground and descending from trees.

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Desert ants (Melophorus bagoti) navigating with robustness to distortions of the natural panorama

Cited by 17 publications

References 51 publications

How do backward-walking ants (Cataglyphis velox) cope with navigational uncertainty?

How do backward-walking ants (Cataglyphis velox) cope with navigational uncertainty?

Honeybees use the skyline in orientation

The View from the Trees: Nocturnal Bull Ants, Myrmecia midas, Use the Surrounding Panorama While Descending from Trees

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