Desert ants benefit from combining visual and olfactory landmarks

Abstract

Visual cueAs a visual cue we used two pieces of black cardboard (each 10cm wide, 7cm high) that were placed adjacent to the nest entrance on the channel walls (Fig.1B) Accepted 20 December 2010 SUMMARY The desert ant, Cataglyphis fortis, uses both visual and olfactory cues to guide its return to the nest. The ants use vision-based path integration for long-distance navigation and memorize the visual and olfactory surrounding of the nest to finally locate the entrance. In the present study we investigated how the visual and the olfactory navigation systems interact. In field experiments ants were trained to associate the nest with a visual cue, an olfactory cue or a combination of both cues. We tested ants after one, five and 15 training runs, to investigate whether the ants would make use of the training cues to pinpoint the nest. We found that they were slow to learn the location of the nest when it was specified by just an olfactory or a visual cue. However, the ants focused their nest search after the first training run with the combined cue. Equally experienced ants responded to the individually presented visual or olfactory cues with the same high accuracy as they did to the combined cue. After 15 training runs, the combined cue still evoked an accurate response in the test, whereas the individually presented cues no longer did. Apparently, C. fortis benefit from combining their visual and olfactory navigational tools, because the bimodal sensory input accelerates the acquisition of landmark information.

Multimodal sensory reliance in the nocturnal homing of the amblypygid Phrynus pseudoparvulus (Class Arachnida, Order Amblypygi)?

“…Currently, the nature of the olfactory or visual stimuli remains unknown and the degree to which successful homing relies on one or both sensory stimuli is inconclusive. Interestingly, work by Steck et al (2011) have demonstrated that desert ants (C. fortis) also use both olfactory and visual cues to guide their return routes to the nest. Following training with independent or combined cues, they found that ants learned the location of their nest more quickly with multimodal cues (Stecket al, 2011).…”

“…Past work has largely focused on the role of olfaction in tracking pheromone trails over short distances (Rosengren, 1977;Beugnon and Fourcassie, 1988), but there is evidence that non-pheromonal olfactory cues can also facilitate navigation. For example, the desert ant, Cataglyphis fortis, which was previously thought to rely solely on path integration and visual cues to navigate and find their nests, was recently found to use odor landmarks as well (Steck et al, 2009(Steck et al, , 2011. Additionally, German cockroaches, Blattella germanica, use path integration, visual landmarks, and olfactory cues to indicate the end of their path (Rivault and Durier, 2004).…”

Comparative outlook over physiological and ecological characteristics of three closely-related Myrmica species

“…It complementarily uses odors while travelling (Wolf & Wehner 2000), and uses odors as an additional cue for finding its nest (Steck et al 2009). In fact, these ants use together visual and olfactory landmarks in an optimum combination (Steck et al 2011).…”

Cuttlefish rely on both polarized light and landmarks for orientation

“…However, it seems likely that the importance of spatial learning for survival favors the simultaneous acquisition of redundant types of spatial information because it allows secondary cues to be used as backup when primary cues are unavailable (Shettleworth 2010). An increasing number of experiments support this idea in species ranging from insects (Wehner et al 1996;Steck et al 2011) to rodents (Lavenex and Schenk 1996;Rossier et al 2000;Shettleworth 2003, 2005).…”