Desert ants use olfactory scenes for navigation

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

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.04.029

Cited by 59 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…This consideration lends strong support to the hypothesis that much of the navigational behavior of P. laevifrons is based on olfactory information (see also Beck andGörke, 1974, andHebets et al, 2014b). Indeed, olfaction as a navigational guide is not unusual in arthropods, particularly ants (Steck, 2012;Buehlmann et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Importance of the antenniform legs, but not vision, for homing by the neotropical whip spider,Paraphrynus laevifrons

Bingman

Graving

Hebets

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Amblypygids, or whip spiders, are nocturnal, predatory arthropods that display a robust ability to navigate to their home refuge. Prior field observations and displacement studies in amblypygids demonstrated an ability to home from distances as far away as 10 m. In the current study, micro-transmitters were used to take morning position fixes of individual Paraphrynus laevifrons following an experimental displacement of 10 m from their home refuge. The intention was to assess the relative importance of vision compared with sensory input acquired from the antenniform legs for navigation as well as other aspects of their spatial behavior. Displaced individuals were randomly assigned to three treatment groups: (i) control individuals; (ii) visiondeprived individuals, VD; and (iii) individuals with sensory input from the tips of their antenniform legs compromised, AD. Control and VD subjects were generally successful in returning home, and the direction of their movement on the first night following displacement was homeward oriented. By contrast, AD subjects experienced a complete loss of navigational ability, and movement on the first night indicated no hint of homeward orientation. The data strongly support the hypothesis that sensory input from the tips of the antenniform legs is necessary for successful homing in amblypygids following displacement to an unfamiliar location, and we hypothesize an essential role of olfaction for this navigational ability.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Importance of the antenniform legs, but not vision, for homing by the neotropical whip spider,Paraphrynus laevifrons

Bingman

Graving

Hebets

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…Animals can learn odor landscapes over longer periods, by associating odor cues with location. Desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, have been shown to use learned olfactory scenes for homeward navigation in the absence of other directional cues [58]. Similarly, in mice, efficient foraging strategies can overtake an otherwise local gradient ascent strategy, if prior information about the odor scene is available [59].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

WalkingDrosophilanavigate complex plumes using stochastic decisions biased by the timing of odor encounters

Demir

Kadakia

Anderson

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Insects find food, mates, and egg-laying sites by tracking odor plumes swept by complex wind patterns. Previous studies have shown that moths and flies localize plumes by surging upwind at odor onset and turning cross-or downwind at odor offset. Less clear is how, once within the expanding cone of the odor plume, insects use their brief encounters with individual odor packets, whose location and timing are random, to progress towards the source. Experiments and theory have suggested that the timing of odor encounters might assist navigation, but connecting behaviors to individual encounters has been challenging. Here, we imaged complex odor plumes simultaneous with freely-walking flies, allowing us to quantify how behavior is shaped by individual odor encounters. Combining measurements, dynamical models, and statistical inference, we found that within the plume cone, individual encounters did not trigger reflexive surging, casting, or counterturning. Instead, flies turned stochastically with stereotyped saccades, whose direction was biased upwind by the timing of prior odor encounters, while the magnitude and rate of saccades remained constant. Odor encounters did not strongly affect walking speed. Instead, flies used encounter timing to modulate the rate of transitions between walks and stops. When stopped, flies initiated walks using information from multiple odor encounters, suggesting that integrating evidence without losing position was part of the strategy. These results indicate that once within the complex odor plume, where odor location and timing are unpredictable, animals navigate with biased random walks shaped by the entire sequence of encounters.

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“…Whether (stingless) bees can also use olfactory landmarks, e.g., the scent of flowering tree species or a rotting log, instead or in addition to visual landmarks for path integration and map memorizing, has, to our knowledge, not yet been investigated. Such olfactory mapping has however been demonstrated for desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis: Buehlmann et al 2015) and should be subject to further study in bees.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resources or landmarks: which factors drive homing success in Tetragonula carbonaria foraging in natural and disturbed landscapes?

et al. 2016

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To date, no study has investigated how landscape structural (visual) alterations affect navigation and thus homing success in stingless bees. We addressed this question in the Australian stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria by performing marking, release and re-capture experiments in landscapes differing in habitat homogeneity (i.e., the proportion of elongated ground features typically considered prominent visual landmarks). We investigated how landscape affected the proportion of bees and nectar foragers returning to their hives as well as the earliest time bees and foragers returned. Undisturbed landscapes with few landmarks (that are conspicuous to the human eye) and large proportions of vegetation cover (natural forests) were classified visually/structurally homogeneous, and disturbed landscapes with many landmarks and fragmented or no extensive vegetation cover (gardens and plantations) visually/structurally heterogeneous. We found that proportions of successfully returning nectar foragers and earliest times first bees and foragers returned did not differ between landscapes. However, most bees returned in the visually/structurally most (forest) and least (garden) homogeneous landscape, suggesting that they use other than elongated ground features for navigation and that return speed is primarily driven by resource availability in a landscape.

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Desert ants use olfactory scenes for navigation

Cited by 59 publications

References 44 publications

Importance of the antenniform legs, but not vision, for homing by the neotropical whip spider,Paraphrynus laevifrons

Importance of the antenniform legs, but not vision, for homing by the neotropical whip spider,Paraphrynus laevifrons

WalkingDrosophilanavigate complex plumes using stochastic decisions biased by the timing of odor encounters

Resources or landmarks: which factors drive homing success in Tetragonula carbonaria foraging in natural and disturbed landscapes?

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