Landmarks or panoramas: what do navigating ants attend to for guidance?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Insects are known to rely on terrestrial landmarks for navigation. Landmarks are used to chart a route or pinpoint a goal. The distant panorama, however, is often thought not to guide navigation directly during a familiar journey, but to act as a contextual cue that primes the correct memory of the landmarks.

Results

We provided Melophorus bagoti ants with a huge artificial landmark located right near the nest entrance to find out whether navigating ants focus on such a prominent visual landmark for homing guidance. When the landmark was displaced by small or large distances, ant routes were affected differently. Certain behaviours appeared inconsistent with the hypothesis that guidance was based on the landmark only. Instead, comparisons of panoramic images recor

SUBMITTER: Wystrach A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3177867 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature