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 material The online version of this article (10.1007/s00359-020-01431-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

15Ants are excellent navigators taking into account multimodal sensory information as they move through 16 the world. To be able to accurately localise the nest at the end of a foraging journey, visual cues, wind 17 direction and also olfactory cues need to be learnt. Learning walks are performed at the start of an ant's 18 foraging career or when the appearance of the nest surrounding has changed. We investigated here 19 whether the structure of such learning walks in the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis takes into account wind 20 direction in conjunction with the learning of new visual information. Ants learnt to travel back and forth 21 between their nest and a feeder, and we then introduced a black cylinder near their nest to induce 22 learning walks in regular foragers. By doing this across days with different prevailing wind directions, 23we were able to probe how ants balance the influence of different sensory modalities. We found that (i) 24 the ants' outwards headings are influenced by the direction of the wind with their routes deflected in 25 such a way that they will arrive downwind of their nest when homing, (ii) a novel object along the route 26 induces learning walks in experienced ants and (iii) the structure of learning walks is shaped by the 27 wind direction rather than the position of the visual cue. 28 29 266 This project was funded by the people programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union's 267 Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013, under REA grant agreement no. PIEF-GA-2013-268 301624765) to CB. PG is additionally funded by a BBSRC grant BB/R005036/1 and EPSRC grant 269 EP/P006094/1 and CB is additionally funded by a BBSRC grant BB/R005036/1. JAVV was hosted 270 within the Brains on Board project.

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