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When navigating wood ants use a shape's centre of mass to extract directional information from a panoramic skyline

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posted on 2023-06-09, 08:17 authored by Joseph L Woodgate, Cornelia BuehlmannCornelia Buehlmann, Thomas Collett
Bees and ants can control their direction of travel within a familiar landscape using the information available in the surrounding visual scene. To learn more about the visual cues that contribute to this directional control, we have examined how wood ants obtain direction from a single shape that is presented in an otherwise uniform panorama. Earlier experiments revealed that when an ant's goal is aligned with a point within a prominent shape, the ant is guided by a global property of the shape: it learns the relative areas of the shape that lie to its left and right when facing the goal and sets its path by keeping the proportions at the memorised value. This strategy cannot be applied when the direction of the goal lies outside the shape. To see whether a different global feature of the shape might guide ants under these conditions, we have trained ants to follow a direction to a point outside a single shape and then analysed their direction of travel when they are presented with different shapes. The tests indicate that ants learn the retinal position of the centre of mass of the training shape when facing the goal and can then guide themselves by placing the centre of mass of training and test shapes in this learnt position.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Journal of Experimental Biology

ISSN

1477-9145

Publisher

The Company of Biologists Ltd

Volume

219

Page range

1689-1696

Department affiliated with

  • Evolution, Behaviour and Environment Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Insect Navigation Research Group Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-10-13

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2018-01-01

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2017-10-13

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