SUMMARY Foraging desert ants return to their starting point, the nest, by means of path integration. If the path-integration vector has been run off but the nest has not yet been reached, the ants engage in systematic search behavior. This behavior results in a system of search loops of ever increasing size and finally leads to a search density profile peaking at the location where the path integration system has been reset to zero. In this study we investigate whether this systematic search behavior is adapted to the uncertainty resulting from the preceding foraging run. We show first that the longer the distances of the foraging excursions, the larger the errors occurring during path integration, and second that the ants adapt their systematic search strategy to their increasing uncertainty by extending their search pattern. Hence, the density of the systematic search pattern is correlated with the ants' confidence in their path integrator. This confidence decreases with increasing foraging distances.

Habituation is one of the most fundamental learning processes that allow animals to adapt to dynamic environments. It is ubiquitous and often thought of as a simple form of non-associative learning. Very little is known, though, about the rules that govern habituation and their significance under natural conditions. Questions about how animals incorporate habituation into their daily behaviour and how they can assure only to habituate to non-relevant stimuli are still unanswered. Animals under threat of predation should be particularly selective about which stimuli they habituate to, since ignoring a real threat could be fatal. In this study, we tested the response of fiddler crabs, Uca vomeris, to repeatedly approaching dummy predators to find out whether these animals habituate to potential predators and to test the selectivity of the habituation process. The crabs habituated to model predators, even though they were confronted with real predators during the same habituation process. They showed remarkable selectivity towards the stimulus: a simple change in the approach distance of the stimulus led to a recovery in their responses. The results strongly indicate that in the context of predator avoidance, habituation under natural conditions is highly selective and a stimulus is not defined just by its current sensory signature, but also its spatio-temporal history.

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Path integration enables desert arthropods to find back to their nest on the shortest track from any position. To perform path integration successfully, speeds and turning angles along the preceding outbound path have to be measured continuously and combined to determine an internal global vector leading back home at any time. A number of experiments have given an idea how arthropods might use allothetic or idiothetic signals to perceive their orientation and moving speed. We systematically review the four possible model descriptions of mathematically precise path integration, whereby we favour and elaborate the hitherto not used variant of egocentric cartesian coordinates. Its simple and intuitive structure is demonstrated in comparison to the other models. Measuring two speeds, the forward moving speed and the angular turning rate, and implementing them into a linear system of differential equations provides the necessary information during outbound route, reorientation process and return path. In addition, we propose several possible types of systematic errors that can cause deviations from the correct homeward course. Deviations have been observed for several species of desert arthropods in different experiments, but their origin is still under debate. Using our egocentric path integration model we propose simple error indices depending on path geometry that will allow future experiments to rule out or corroborate certain error types.