True navigation by an amphibian

Phillips, John B.; Adler, Kraig; Borland, S. Chris

doi:10.1016/0003-3472(95)80146-4

Cited by 78 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…An alternative explanation is that turtles determined their position relative to the capture area, or at least the general direction towards the capture area, using cues available at the testing location. Such an ability is known to exist in several animals, including birds (Wiltschko and Wiltschko, 2003), amphibians (Phillips, 1995) and lobsters (Boles and Lohmann, 2003). Our data suggest that sea turtles also possess this ability and are therefore capable of map-based navigation as defined by Able (2001).…”

Section: Map-based Navigationsupporting

confidence: 51%

Navigation and seasonal migratory orientation in juvenile sea turtles

Avens

Lohmann

2004

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Juvenile loggerhead and green turtles that inhabit inshore waters of North Carolina, USA undertake long seasonal migrations, after which they often return to specific feeding areas. In addition, juvenile turtles are capable of homing to specific sites after being displaced. As a first step towards investigating the navigational mechanisms that underlie these movements, juvenile turtles were captured in coastal waters of North Carolina and displaced 30-167·km along circuitous routes while deprived of visual cues. At the testing location, turtles were tethered in a circular arena and permitted to swim while their orientation was monitored. Between May and September, when juvenile loggerhead and green turtles inhabit feeding areas along the North Carolina coast, turtles oriented in directions that corresponded closely with the most direct route back to their capture locations. During October and November, however, both loggerhead and green turtles oriented southward, a direction consistent with the migratory paths of turtles beginning their autumn migration. The results demonstrate for the first time that both homing and migratory orientation can be elicited in juvenile turtles under laboratory conditions in which orientation cues can be readily manipulated. In addition, the results provide evidence that juvenile loggerheads can assess their position relative to a goal using local cues available at the test site and are therefore capable of map-based navigation.

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Section: Map-based Navigationsupporting

confidence: 51%

Navigation and seasonal migratory orientation in juvenile sea turtles

Avens

Lohmann

2004

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…These results suggest the ability of bats to navigate within their visually familiar area based on sets of distal visual landmarks-a capacity that could be termed a form of a visually based cognitive map (2,19). They also demonstrate bats' ability to eventually home when translocated well outside their visually familiar area-a capacity often called "true navigation" in birds and other animals (13,14,24,25). To our knowledge, this is the first evidence for either of these navigational capacities in bats, and the first evidence for large-scale navigation in a free-ranging wild mammal.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…Evidence for the existence of such navigational map (11,12) comes from field and laboratory experiments. In the field, homing experiments in translocated lobsters (13), newts (14) and pigeons (1,15,16), for example, showed an ability to navigate from an unfamiliar site to one or more goal locations. Typically, inferences from such homing experiments were based either on animals' vanishing bearing at the release site, or animals' reappearance at the goal location.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-scale navigational map in a mammal

Tsoar

Nathan

Bartan

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

184

150

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Navigation, the ability to reach desired goal locations, is critical for animals and humans. Animal navigation has been studied extensively in birds, insects, and some marine vertebrates and invertebrates, yet we are still far from elucidating the underlying mechanisms in other taxonomic groups, especially mammals. Here we report a systematic study of the mechanisms of long-range mammalian navigation. High-resolution global positioning system tracking of bats was conducted here, which revealed high, fast, and very straight commuting flights of Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) from their cave to remote fruit trees. Bats returned to the same individual trees night after night. When displaced 44 km south, bats homed directly to one of two goal locationsfamiliar fruit tree or cave-ruling out beaconing, route-following, or path-integration mechanisms. Bats released 84 km south, within a deep natural crater, were initially disoriented (but eventually left the crater toward the home direction and homed successfully), whereas bats released at the crater-edge top homed directly, suggesting navigation guided primarily by distal visual landmarks. Taken together, these results provide evidence for a large-scale "cognitive map" that enables navigation of a mammal within its visually familiar area, and they also demonstrate the ability to home back when translocated outside the visually familiar area.

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“…1A). True navigation has been shown in a variety of taxa, including several species of birds (5-7), the eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) (8), the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) (9), and the spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) (10). Alternatively, some migrants may use a vector (or clock and compass) navigation strategy (4,5,(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16), meaning that they do not possess a map but orient in an inherited direction using just a compass system and a clock or calendar (17,18).…”

Section: Monarch Butterflies (Danaus Plexippus) Breeding In Eastern Nmentioning

confidence: 99%

An experimental displacement and over 50 years of tag-recoveries show that monarch butterflies are not true navigators

Mouritsen

Derbyshire

Stalleicken

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) breeding in eastern North America are famous for their annual fall migration to their overwintering grounds in Mexico. However, the mechanisms they use to successfully reach these sites remain poorly understood. Here, we test whether monarchs are true navigators who can determine their location relative to their final destination using both a "compass" and a "map". Using flight simulators, we recorded the orientation of wild-caught monarchs in southwestern Ontario and found that individuals generally flew in a southwest direction toward the wintering grounds. When displaced 2,500 km to the west, the same individuals continued to fly in a general southwest direction, suggesting that monarchs use a simple vector-navigation strategy (i.e., use a specific compass bearing without compensating for displacement). Using over 5 decades of field data, we also show that the directional concentration and the angular SD of recoveries from tagged monarchs largely conformed to two mathematical models describing the directional distribution of migrants expected under a vector-navigation strategy. A third analysis of tagged recoveries shows that the increasing directionality of migration from north to south is largely because of the presence of geographic barriers that guide individuals toward overwintering sites. Our work suggests that monarchs breeding in eastern North America likely combine simple orientation mechanisms with geographic features that funnel them toward Mexican overwintering sites, a remarkable achievement considering that these butterflies weigh less than a gram and travel thousands of kilometers to a site they have never seen. mark-recapture | clock-and-compass orientation | numerical model | analytical expectation model | longitudinal displacement

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True navigation by an amphibian

Cited by 78 publications

References 8 publications

Navigation and seasonal migratory orientation in juvenile sea turtles

Navigation and seasonal migratory orientation in juvenile sea turtles

Large-scale navigational map in a mammal

An experimental displacement and over 50 years of tag-recoveries show that monarch butterflies are not true navigators

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