Cue relevance during navigation is a function of scale and experience

Although some species exhibit simple or fixed responses to stimuli across all contexts, many species exhibit highly variable behavioural responses, where the relative importance of incoming sensory cues and prior experience varies with context. To address the complexity of how animals utilize real-time global and local cues and experience while navigating, we conducted two complementary field experiments on unrestrained, freely navigating turtles. We manipulated the availability of local and global cues and monitored the navigation abilities of individual eastern painted turtles, Chrysemys picta, under conditions where either all or only some turtles had prior experience. In the absence of experience and lacking all local cues, all turtles successfully navigated using a global cue alone. However, when animals were navigating familiar areas, they ignored the presence of an experimental global cue to which they had previously responded, suggesting the importance of previous knowledge (i.e. memory) during navigation. In contrast, turtles lacking experience successfully navigated using local cues, until presented with global ones, at which point, these turtles used only global ones. Together, these experiments allow us to address the relative importance of cue hierarchies used during decision making. These results demonstrate the value of learning and experience in navigation and the impact this experience has on the relative importance of global and local cues.