Can the ant Cataglyphis cursor (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) encode global landmark-landmark relationships in addition to isolated landmark-goal relationships?
The ant Cataglyphis cursor was tested for its landmark-based homing in a laboratory setting. Workers were induced to go down a tube at the center of an arena to forage. On the periphery of the arena were four different black shapes serving as the only distinguishing visual landmarks, i.e., a cross, a circle, a triangle, and a square. The purpose was to show that the spatial memory of ants represents something of the overall arrangement of landmarks. When first released into the arena, the ants were not oriented toward home in their navigation. After 2 days of free access in the usual landmark setup, the ants learned to orient rapidly significantly goalward. When landmarks were all removed, they did not orient in any direction significantly. When the landmarks were rotated by 90°, their compass positions were changed but their relative positions maintained, and the ants rotated their heading by a similar ammount. This rotated homing direction implies that the array of landmarks was used as the only source of directional determination. When the landmark nearest their home was absent, but the other three were in their usual places, the ants were slightly homeward oriented at one-quarter of the way, but not at one-half of the way when the other landmarks were behind them. When the landmarks were randomly permuted, both their compass positions and their overall spatial relationships were altered, and the ants were not significantly oriented in any direction. These results indicate that spatial memory in the ant C. cursor encodes global landmark-landmark relations. Thus, ants can abstract certain topological properties of their environment
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Texto biblioteca |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | Cataglyphis cursor, Hormigas, Datos espaciales, |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|