Odometry and insect navigation

Abstract

SummaryAnimals have needed to find their way about almost since a free-living life style evolved. Particularly, if an animal has a homeshelter or nesting site -true navigation becomes necessary to shuttle between this home and areas of other activities, such as feeding. As old as navigation is in the animal kingdom, as diverse are its mechanisms and implementations, depending on an organism's ecology and its endowment with sensors and actuators. The use of landmarks for piloting or the use of trail pheromones for route following have been examined in great detail and in a variety of animal species. The same is true for senses of direction -the compasses for navigation -and the construction of vectors for navigation from compass and distance cues. The measurement of distance itself -odometry -has received much less attention. The present review addresses some recent progress in the understanding of odometers in invertebrates, after outlining general principles of navigation to put odometry in its proper context. Finally, a number of refinements that increase navigation accuracy and safety are addressed.

Visual odometry in the wolf spider Lycosa tarantula (Araneae: Lycosidae)

“…Other studies have clearly shown that C. fortis uses proprioceptive information to measure the distance travelled (Wittlinger et al, 2007;Wolf, 2011). In these studies, leg and stride lengths were manipulated by elongating the legs (the so-called 'stilts ants') or by shortening them (the so-called 'stumps ants').…”

A human-computer collaborative workflow for the acquisition and analysis of terrestrial insect movement in behavioral field studies

“…The movement of individual insects can be extremely informative as to the nature of navigational strategies and decision making processes (reviewed in [1][2][3]). However, many previous studies have been somewhat limited in their scope due to the lack of workflows for collecting, processing, and analyzing trajectories in the field.…”

Do leaf-cutter ants Atta colombica obtain their magnetic sensors from soil?

“…It involves integrating all angles steered and all distances covered into a home vector (Wehner et al 1996). In combination with a skylight compass, egocentric cues are known to play an important role during path integration by ants (Wolf 2010), especially in determination of distance (Wittlinger et al 2006) and inclination (Wohlgemuth et al 2001). However, egocentric information as a directional compass has not been previously proposed in species other than A. colombica: when evaluated under a 180°shift in the magnetic field and in absence of any geocentric cues, workers of A. colombica oriented bimodally, either following the magnetic shift or orienting toward true home (Riveros and Srygley 2008).…”