Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 281, Issue 1787, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.0634
Keywords
navigation; memory; insect; control; route
Categories
Funding
- BBSRC
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Insects such as desert ants learn stereotyped visual routes between their nests and reliable food sites. Studies here reveal an important control element for ensuring that the route memories are used appropriately. They find that visual route memories can be disengaged, so that they do not provide guidance, even when all appropriate visual cues are present and when there are no competing guidance cues. Ants were trained along a simple route dominated by a single isolated landmark. If returning ants were caught just before entering the nest and replaced at the feeder, then they often interrupted the recapitulation of their homeward route with a period of apparent confusion during which the route memories were ignored. A series of experiments showed that this confusion occurred in response to the repetition of the route, and that the ants must therefore maintain some kind of a memory of their visual experience on the current trip home. A conceptual model of route guidance is offered to explain the results here. It proposes how the memory might act and suggests a general role for disengagement in regulating route guidance.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available