Homing in German Cockroaches, Blattella germanica (L.) (Insecta: Dictyoptera): Multi‐Channelled Orientation Cues

Abstract

Cockroaches use navigational cues to elaborate their return path to the shelter. Our experiments investigated how individuals weighted information to choose where to search for the shelter in situations where path integration, visual and olfactory cues were conflicting. We showed that homing relied on a complex set of environmental stimuli, each playing a particular part. Path integration cues give cockroaches an estimation of the position of their goal, visual landmarks guide them to that position from a distance, while olfactory cues indicate the end of the path. Cockroaches gave the greatest importance to the first cues they encountered along their return path. Nevertheless, visual cues placed beyond aggregation pheromone deposits reduced their arrest efficiency and induced search in the area near the visual cues.

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

“…Such a mechanism is likely during "learning walks" in new environments, where animals locate landmarks and produce mental snapshots of their placement (Graham et al, 2010;Muller and Wehner, 2010). Nav Gorner, 1994), roaches (Rivault and Durier, 2004), and fiddler crabs (Cheng, 2012;Zeil, 1998), and remains a primary focus of many studies of terrestrial arthropod 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). Examples of navigation based upon non-visual sensory modalities, such as olfaction, are nonetheless relatively uncommon.…”

Vision-independent odometry in the ant Cataglyphis cursor

“…How invertebrates gauge the distances they have travelled has been widely investigated in central place foragers returning to their shelter after each foraging trip [ants (Ronacher et al 2000); bees (Esch and Burns 1995;Hrncir et al 2003;Srinivasan et al 1996); cockroaches (Rivault and Durier 2004); fiddler crabs (Layne et al 2003)]. The importance of visual cues for measuring odometric information depends mainly on whether the invertebrates fly or walk.…”

Visual Orientation and Navigation in Nocturnal Arthropods

“…However, as with other visually detected nocturnal homing cues, landmarks are only useful if they provide sufficient visual contrast. Nonetheless, increasing evidence suggests that there are many nocturnal arthropods with sufficient visual sensitivity to home with the aid of landmarks, including spiders [Nør-gaard et al, 2007], crickets [Hale and Bailey, 2004], cockroaches [Durier and Rivault, 1999;Rivault and Durier, 2004], ants [Taylor, 1978;Kaul and Kopteva, 1982;Höll-dobler and Taylor, 1983;Klotz and Reid, 1993;Narendra et al, 2010], bees Somanathan et al, 2008b] and wasps [von Schremmer, 1972;Maschwitz and Hänel, 1988;Hunt et al, 1995]. Of these, the best understood cases are the nocturnal Namibian spider Leucorchestris arenicola , the nocturnal Central American halictid bee Megalopta genalis and the giant Indian carpenter bee Xylocopa tranquebarica [Somanathan et al, 2008b].…”