Abstract
Desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, perform large foraging excursions during which they continuously compute a home vector that allows them to return to the nest on the shortest way. This type of navigation, termed path integration, needs a compass system and an odometer. Ants use several cues to determine their walking direction, two of the most important ones being the sun position and the polarization pattern of the sky. We tested whether an information transfer is possible from one compass system to the other, which depend on different anatomical substrates. Since the sky’s polarization pattern is detected by UV-photoreceptors located in the dorsal rim area (DRA), we used an orange Perspex filter that eliminated the UV part of the spectrum to prevent the use of the polarization compass. The use of the sun compass could be excluded by appropriate screens. In the critical tests the ants had learned a nest-feeder direction with e.g. the sun compass only, and were later tested with the polarization compass, or vice versa. The results show that a transfer is possible in both directions.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Julia Stephan and Joshua Alcaniz for their help on the field and the anonymous referees for useful suggestions. Special thanks are due to Rüdiger Wehner for his help with the interpretation of the present data and many discussions over the last years. We also want to express our gratitude to the Tunisian government for kindly allowing us to carry out the investigations in this beautiful country. Financial support was provided by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (Ro 547/10-1) and the Volkswagen Foundation (I/78 574) to B.R. The experiments comply with the “Principles of animal Care” and with the current German law.
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We dedicate this paper to Rüdiger Wehner who initiated research on desert ant navigation and helped it to blossom by infecting so many students and collaborators with his love for the amazing Cataglyphis ants. Rüdiger Wehner truly deserves the title Tabib-en-Neml—the ant doctor—a nickname given to Felix Santschi 100 years ago.
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Lebhardt, F., Ronacher, B. Transfer of directional information between the polarization compass and the sun compass in desert ants. J Comp Physiol A 201, 599–608 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0928-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0928-9