Multimodal influences on learning walks in desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis).

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Vega Vermehren, Jose Adrian Buehlmann, Cornelia Fernandes, Ana Sofia David Graham, Paul
Abstract	Ants are excellent navigators using multimodal information for navigation. To accurately localise the nest at the end of a foraging journey, visual cues, wind direction and also olfactory cues need to be learnt. Learning walks are performed at the start of an ant’s foraging career or when the appearance of the nest surrounding has changed. We investigated here whether the structure of such learning walks in the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis takes into account wind direction in conjunction with the learning of new visual information. Ants learnt to travel back and forth between their nest and a feeder, and we then introduced a black cylinder near their nest to induce learning walks in regular foragers. By doing this across days with different wind directions, we were able to probe how ants balance different sensory modalities. We found that (1) the ants’ outwards headings are influenced by the wind direction with their routes deflected such that they will arrive downwind of their target, (2) a novel object along the route induces learning walks in experienced ants and (3) the structure of learning walks is shaped by the wind direction rather than the position of the visual cue.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00359-020-01431-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC7392947&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	03407594
Journal	Journal of Comparative Physiology. A, Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology [J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol]
Volume Number	206
DOI	10.1007/s00359-020-01431-9
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7392947
Issue Number	5
PubMed reference number	32537664
e-ISSN	14321351
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publisher Date	2020-06-15
Publisher Place	Berlin/Heidelberg
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2020
Subject Keyword	Learning walks Ant navigation Multimodal navigation Visual cues Wind
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Physiology Behavioral Neuroscience Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics