Desert ants (Melophorus bagoti) oscillate and scan more in navigation when the visual scene changes

IF 1.9 2区 生物学 Q3 BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Sudhakar Deeti, Ken Cheng
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Solitarily foraging ants learn to navigate between important locations by comparing their current view with memorized scenes along a familiar route. As desert ants, in particular, travel between their nest and a food source, they establish stable and visually guided routes that guide them without relying on trail pheromones. We investigated how changes in familiar visual scenes affect the navigation of the red honey ant (Melophorus bagoti). In Experiment 1, ants were trained to follow a one-way diamond-shaped path to forage and return home. We manipulated scene familiarity by adding a board on their homebound route just before the nest. In Experiment 2, ants were trained to travel a straight path from their nest to a feeder, and we removed the prominent landmarks on the route after they had established a stable route. We predicted that these scene changes would cause the ants to deviate from their usual straight paths, slow down, scan more, and increase their lateral oscillations to gather additional information. Our findings showed that when the familiar scene was changed, ants oscillated more, slowed their speed, and increased scanning bouts, indicating a shift from exploiting known information to more actively exploring and learning new visual cues. These results suggest that scene familiarity plays a crucial role in ant navigation, and changes in their visual environment lead to distinct behavioral adaptations aimed at learning about the new cues.

沙漠蚁(Melophorus bagoti)在导航中随着视觉场景的变化而振荡和扫描
单独觅食的蚂蚁通过比较它们当前的视野和熟悉路线上记忆的场景来学习在重要地点之间导航。特别是当沙漠蚂蚁在巢穴和食物来源之间旅行时,它们建立了稳定的视觉引导路线,而不依赖于踪迹信息素。我们研究了熟悉的视觉场景的变化如何影响红蜜蚁(Melophorus bagoti)的导航。在实验1中,蚂蚁被训练成沿着一条单向菱形路径觅食并返回家园。我们通过在鸟巢前的回家路线上添加一块板来操纵场景熟悉度。在实验2中,我们训练蚂蚁从巢穴到喂食器走一条直线,在它们建立了一条稳定的路线后,我们移除了路线上明显的地标。我们预测这些场景的变化会导致蚂蚁偏离它们通常的直线路径,减速,扫描更多,并增加它们的横向振荡以收集额外的信息。我们的研究结果表明,当熟悉的场景发生变化时,蚂蚁的波动更大,速度变慢,扫描次数增加,这表明它们从利用已知信息转向更积极地探索和学习新的视觉线索。这些结果表明,场景熟悉度在蚂蚁导航中起着至关重要的作用,它们视觉环境的变化导致了旨在学习新线索的不同行为适应。
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来源期刊
Animal Cognition
Animal Cognition 生物-动物学
CiteScore
4.50
自引率
18.50%
发文量
125
审稿时长
4-8 weeks
期刊介绍: Animal Cognition is an interdisciplinary journal offering current research from many disciplines (ethology, behavioral ecology, animal behavior and learning, cognitive sciences, comparative psychology and evolutionary psychology) on all aspects of animal (and human) cognition in an evolutionary framework. Animal Cognition publishes original empirical and theoretical work, reviews, methods papers, short communications and correspondence on the mechanisms and evolution of biologically rooted cognitive-intellectual structures. The journal explores animal time perception and use; causality detection; innate reaction patterns and innate bases of learning; numerical competence and frequency expectancies; symbol use; communication; problem solving, animal thinking and use of tools, and the modularity of the mind.
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