Odometry and backtracking: social and individual navigation in group foraging desert harvester ants (Veromessor pergandei)

Plowes, Nicola J. R.; Du, Yu; Congdon, Jenna V.; Bulitko, Vadim; Soares, Everton Schumacker

doi:10.1007/s10071-018-1218-7

Cited by 11 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…However, there are multiple recent lines of evidence that suggest foragers instead path integrate both while in the fan and the column. First, fan forager paths to the column head are biased in the nest direction, suggesting that foragers maintain a nestward vector in the column, which is suppressed during fan navigation (Plowes et al 2019). Furthermore, the presence of a column-vector is supported by recent findings showing that foragers both attend to celestial cues and accumulate distance estimates while on the pheromone-based column.…”

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Recently, the use of multiple vector memories directed by celestial and odometer cues has been explored in the desert harvester ant (Veromessor pergandei), as foragers of this species show evidence of path integration originating from a non-nest site (Plowes et al 2019). V. pergandei ants forage with a column and fan structure, using both social and individual navigational cues in separate stages of the foraging trip.…”

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Past the end of the column (referred to as the column head), the ants spread out to forage individually in a foraging fan (Plowes et al 2013(Plowes et al , 2014. Once a piece of food is collected, fan foragers use path integration to return to the column head and as foragers re-enter the pheromone column they change their heading direction toward the nest entrance, following the column to the nest (Plowes et al 2019). Previous work has shown that returning fan foragers rely on path-integration-based cues that return the forager to the column head and not the nest entrance (Plowes et al 2019;Freas et al 2019b).…”

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Once a piece of food is collected, fan foragers use path integration to return to the column head and as foragers re-enter the pheromone column they change their heading direction toward the nest entrance, following the column to the nest (Plowes et al 2019). Previous work has shown that returning fan foragers rely on path-integration-based cues that return the forager to the column head and not the nest entrance (Plowes et al 2019;Freas et al 2019b). This behaviour has been theorised to indicate that foragers only begin to accumulate a path integrator after leaving the pheromone trail.…”

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pheromone cue triggers switch between vectors in the desert harvest ant, Veromessor pergandei

2020

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The desert harvester ant (Veromessor pergandei) employs a mixture of social and individual navigational strategies at separate stages of their foraging trip. Individuals leave the nest along a pheromone-based column, travelling 3-40 m before spreading out to forage individually in a fan. Foragers use path integration while in this fan, accumulating a direction and distance estimate (vector) to return to the end of the column (column head), yet foragers' potential use of path integration in the pheromone-based column is less understood. Here we show foragers rely on path integration both in the foraging fan and while in the column to return to the nest, using separate vectors depending on their current foraging stage in the fan or column. Returning foragers displaced while in the fan oriented and travelled to the column head location while those displaced after reaching the column travel in the nest direction, signifying the maintenance of a two-vector system with separate fan and column vectors directing a forager to two separate spatial locations. Interestingly, the trail pheromone and not the surrounding terrestrial cues mediate use of these distinct vectors, as fan foragers briefly exposed to the pheromone cues of the column in isolation altered their paths to a combination of the fan and column vectors. The pheromone acts as a contextual cue triggering both the retrieval of the column-vector memory and its integration with the forager's current fan-vector.

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Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pheromone cue triggers switch between vectors in the desert harvest ant, Veromessor pergandei

2020

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“…Chief mechanisms include path integration (Collett & Collett, ; Wehner & Srinivasan, ), a landmark guidance system (Graham & Cheng, ; Wehner, ) and systematic search (Schultheiss et al, ; Wehner & Srinivasan, ). A mechanism of backtracking has also been identified in two species of ants ( Veromessor pergandei : Freas & Spetch, ; Plowes et al, ; Melophorus bagoti : Wystrach, Schwarz, Baniel, & Cheng, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

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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Not just going with the flow: foraging ants attend to polarised light even while on the pheromone trail

Freas

Plowes

2019

J Comp Physiol A

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Odometry and backtracking: social and individual navigation in group foraging desert harvester ants (Veromessor pergandei)

Cited by 11 publications

References 14 publications

Pheromone cue triggers switch between vectors in the desert harvest ant, Veromessor pergandei

Pheromone cue triggers switch between vectors in the desert harvest ant, Veromessor pergandei

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

Not just going with the flow: foraging ants attend to polarised light even while on the pheromone trail

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