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Animal navigation

Ants match as they march

Nature volume 392, pages 660–661 (1998)Cite this article

Behavioural biologists have long been intrigued by the strategies that animals use to find their way to a feeding site and return home. Hymenopterans, given their miniature brains, are particularly impressive navigators. Bees, wasps and certain species of ant rely heavily on vision for navigation and are very adept at using prominent landmarks, when available, as aids. The paper by Judd and Collett on page 710 of this issue1 provides new insights into how landmarks are memorized and used.

Nearly 20 years ago, Wehner and Räber2 and Cartwright and Collett3 suggested how an insect, when close to its goal, might make use of the surrounding landmarks to pinpoint that goal. Upon its first visit to the goal, the insect takes a ‘snapshot’ of the panorama as seen from the goal. On its subsequent visits the insect finds the goal by positioning itself so that the current image of the environment matches the stored snapshot. If the image of a particular landmark is smaller than in the memorized snapshot, the insect moves closer to that landmark to enlarge its image; if the image is larger, the insect moves away. In other words, the insect homes in on the goal by matching the current view to a ‘retinotopically learned’ image.

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Figure 1: Illustration of how an ant might navigate to its goal (say, a food source) by using a sequence of ‘snapshots’ of the environment acquired during the learning phase after it first visited that goal.

References

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  1. the Centre for Visual Sciences, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, PO Box 475, ACT 2601, Canberra, Australia

    Mandyam V. Srinivasan

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  1. Mandyam V. Srinivasan
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Srinivasan, M. Ants match as they march. Nature 392, 660–661 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/33555

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