Experimental ethology of learning in desert ants: Becoming expert navigators

Freas, Cody A.; Fleischmann, Pauline N.; Chen, Ken

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2018.12.001

Cited by 46 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 114 publications

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“…These results imply that the route recapitulations change long-term memory, rather than causing short-term adaptation. They also illustrate the dynamics of continuous learning in a naturalistic task, highlighting this study's brand of experimental ethology of learning (Freas et al 2019).…”

Section: Factors Affecting Route-followingmentioning

confidence: 94%

Running paths to nowhere: repetition of routes shows how navigating ants modulate online the weights accorded to cues

et al. 2019

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Section: Factors Affecting Route-followingmentioning

confidence: 94%

Running paths to nowhere: repetition of routes shows how navigating ants modulate online the weights accorded to cues

et al. 2019

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“…The application of the temporal weighting rule turned out flexible in this test of the rule in insects. Our study adds to a growing corpus on the experimental ethology of learning to navigate (Freas et al, ; Wystrach et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Upon release in the test ring or at the displacement site, the tested ants typically paused near the centre of the goniometer and scanned the surrounding environment, often making body saccades called pirouettes (in Cataglyphis noda : Fleischmann, Grob, Wehner, & Rössler, ; Freas et al, ; in M. bagoti : Wystrach, Philippides, Aurejac, Cheng, & Graham, ). Then, the ant would walk off directly in one direction.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In landmark guidance, foragers navigate using primarily visual cues present in the surrounding panorama to plot routes to and from their nest (Collett, Graham, Harris, & Hempel‐de‐Ibarra, ; Harris, Graham, & Collett, ; Wehner, ), along with cues of other modalities as well (Freas, Fleischmann, & Cheng, ). In the visual mode, ants use the entire panorama to navigate (Graham & Cheng, ; Lent, Graham, & Collett, ; Wystrach, Beugnon, & Cheng, ; Zeil, ), including global properties such as the skyline, where the earthly objects meet the sky (Graham & Cheng, ), and proportional mass, the fraction of a visual scene to the left or right of the goal heading (Lent et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vector calibration in Australian desert ants, Melophorus bagoti: Effects of a delay after the acquisition of vector information

Lionetti

Chen

2019

Ethology

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Desert ants navigate by using two chief strategies: path integration, keeping track of the straight‐line distance and direction to the starting point as they travel, and landmark guidance, orientation based on the visual panorama. Both Cataglyphis ants in North Africa and Melophorus bagoti in Central Australia are known to adjust their vectors derived from path integration to compensate for mismatches between their outbound direction of travel and (the reverse of) the inbound direction of travel that takes them home, a process known as vector calibration. We created mismatches of 90° between the outbound vector and the homebound direction by displacing ants from a feeder before their homebound run. We examined temporal factors in vector calibration by varying the delay (0, 1 or 3 hr) between the outbound run to the feeder and the homebound run from the displacement site. According to the temporal weighting rule, such a delay should decrease the weight given to the vector information obtained from the outbound run. This in turn should favour reliance on the visual panorama and thus speed up calibration. Results did not support this prediction. At the displacement site, a delay had little effect on the extent of calibration or the speed of calibration (the number of trials to reach maximum calibration). Just before being displaced, ants were also tested in a test ring surrounded by high walls that obliterated the visual scenery. In the test ring, a delay made the ants less likely to rely on their vector: ants were often not oriented as a group. Otherwise, the ants in the test ring also did not calibrate any more or any faster.

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“…They needed more than one foraging trip to the new feeder to generate corresponding waggle dance duration. Experiments on path integration have shown that central place foragers constantly monitor their movements and calculate their position with respect to their nest (Wehner et al, 1996;Wehner and Srinivasan, 2003;Freas et al, 2019). Thus, the forager instantaneously knows the new feeder distance that she will use for the homeward (=inbound)…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Honey bees flexibly use two navigational memories when updating dance distance information

Chatterjee

George

Prabhudev

et al. 2019

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Honey bees can communicate navigational information which makes them unique amongst all prominent insect navigators. Returning foragers recruit nest mates to a food source by communicating flight distance and direction using a small scale walking pattern: the waggle dance. It is still unclear how bees transpose flight information to generate corresponding dance information. In single feeder shift experiments, we monitored for the first time how individual bees update dance duration after a shift of feeder distance. Interestingly, the majority of bees (86%) needed two or more foraging trips to update dance duration. This finding demonstrates that transposing flight navigation information to dance information is not a reflexive behavior. Furthermore, many bees showed intermediate dance durations during the update process, indicating that honey bees highly likely use two memories: (i) a recently acquired navigation experience and (ii) a previously stored flight experience. Double-shift experiments, in which the feeder was moved forward and backward, created an experimental condition in which honey bee foragers did not update dance duration; suggesting the involvement of more complex memory processes. Our behavioral paradigm allows the dissociation of foraging and dance activity and opens the possibility of studying the molecular and neural processes underlying the waggle dance behavior.

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Experimental ethology of learning in desert ants: Becoming expert navigators

Cited by 46 publications

References 114 publications

Running paths to nowhere: repetition of routes shows how navigating ants modulate online the weights accorded to cues

Running paths to nowhere: repetition of routes shows how navigating ants modulate online the weights accorded to cues

Vector calibration in Australian desert ants, Melophorus bagoti: Effects of a delay after the acquisition of vector information

Honey bees flexibly use two navigational memories when updating dance distance information

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