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Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Title:		How desert ants use a visual landmark for guidance along a habitual route
Author(s):		Collett M;
Address:		"School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QG, United Kingdom. M.Collett@exeter.ac.uk"
Journal Title:		Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Year:		2010
Volume:		20100607
Issue:		25
Page Number:		11638 - 11643
DOI:		10.1073/pnas.1001401107
ISSN/ISBN:		1091-6490 (Electronic) 0027-8424 (Print) 0027-8424 (Linking)
Abstract:		"Many animals learn to follow habitual routes between important locations, but how they encode their routes is still largely unknown. Desert ants traveling between their nest and a food site develop stable, visually guided routes that can wind through desert scrub without the use of trail pheromones. Their route memories are sufficiently robust that if a nest-bound ant is caught at the end of its route and replaced somewhere earlier along it, the ant will recapitulate the route from the release site. Insects appear to use panoramas to recognize when they are on a familiar route. I examine here the cues then used for their guidance. Several mechanisms are known for straight segments of a route; but how does an ant encode a curved route along which both the views it sees, and the directions it takes, are constantly changing? The results here suggest that when an ant travels past a landmark on a familiar route, it uses the gradually changing direction of the landmark to trigger a set of associated learned heading directions. A route through a complex 2D environment could thus be encoded and followed economically if it is divided into panorama-defined segments, with each segment controlled by such a 1D mapping. The solution proposed for the ants would be simple to implement in an autonomous robot"
Keywords:		"Algorithms Animals Ants/*physiology *Behavior, Animal Brain Mapping Cues Desert Climate Exploratory Behavior Feeding Behavior Insecta Learning Memory Orientation Space Perception *Spatial Behavior;"
Notes:		"MedlineCollett, Matthew eng Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United Kingdom Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2010/06/11 Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Jun 22; 107(25):11638-43. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1001401107. Epub 2010 Jun 7"