Using T- and Y-mazes in myrmecology and elsewhere: a practical guide

Czaczkes, Tomer J.

doi:10.1007/s00040-018-0621-z

Cited by 30 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 96 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Ants were allowed onto a Y-maze (following Czaczkes, 2018 , Figure 1A ) via a drawbridge. One of the 10 cm long arms presented a disposable paper overlay with a trail of DCM created by applying 3 μl × 2μl of DCM with a glass microcapillary (Servoprax GmbH, Germany).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trail Pheromone Does Not Modulate Subjective Reward Evaluation in Lasius niger Ants

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Comparing the value of options is at the heart of economic decision-making. While an option may have an absolute quality (e.g. a food source has a fixed energy content), the perceived value of the option may be malleable. The factors affecting the perceived value of an option may thus strongly influence which option is ultimately chosen. Expectations have been shown to be a strong driver of perceived value in both humans and social insects, causing an undervaluation of a given option if a better option was expected, and an overvaluation if a poorer one was expected. In humans, perceived value can be strongly affected by social information. Value perception in some insects has also been shown to be affected by social information, showing conformism as in humans and other animals. Here, over a series of experiments, we tested whether pheromone trail presence, a social information source, influenced the perceived value of a food source in the ant Lasius niger. We found that the presence of pheromone trails leading to a sucrose solution does not influence food acceptance, pheromone deposition when returning from a food source, drinking time, or frequency of U-turns on return from the food. Two further assays for measuring changes in food acceptance, designed to increase sensitivity by avoiding ceiling effects, also showed no effect of pheromone presence on food acceptance. In a separate study, L. niger have also been found to show no preference for, or avoidance of, odors associated with foods found in the presence of pheromone. We are thus confident that trail pheromone presence does not affect the perceived value of a food source in these ants.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trail Pheromone Does Not Modulate Subjective Reward Evaluation in Lasius niger Ants

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We designed an outdoor preference experiment that allowed free-living Argentine ant colonies to recruit to food sources accessed via flat versus uneven substrates (figure 3a; electronic supplementary material, figure S1e; Movie S1). Our experimental design accounted for the influence of pheromone trails, navigational memory and edge-following behaviour [41]. Ants significantly preferred flat substrates over the 1 and 3 mm checkerboard patterns, but showed no preference on the 5 mm substrate compared to the flat substrate ( p < 0.001, p < 0.01, and p > 0.05, two-sample t-test) (figure 3b; electronic supplementary material, figure S1f ).…”

Section: Substrate Preference In Free-living Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uneven substrates constrain walking speed in ants through modulation of stride frequency more than stride length

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Natural terrain is rarely flat. Substrate irregularities challenge walking animals to maintain stability, yet we lack quantitative assessments of walking performance and limb kinematics on naturally uneven ground. We measured how continually uneven 3D-printed substrates influence walking performance of Argentine ants by measuring walking speeds of workers from laboratory colonies and by testing colony-wide substrate preference in field experiments. Tracking limb motion in over 8000 videos, we used statistical models that associate walking speed with limb kinematic parameters to compare movement over flat versus uneven ground of controlled dimensions. We found that uneven substrates reduced preferred and peak walking speeds by up to 42% and that ants actively avoided uneven terrain in the field. Observed speed reductions were modulated primarily by shifts in stride frequency instead of stride length (flat R 2 : 0.91 versus 0.50), a pattern consistent across flat and uneven substrates. Mixed effect modelling revealed that walking speeds on uneven substrates were accurately predicted based on flat walking data for over 89% of strides. Those strides that were not well modelled primarily involved limb perturbations, including missteps, active foot repositioning and slipping. Together these findings relate kinematic mechanisms underlying walking performance on uneven terrain to ecologically relevant measures under field conditions.

show abstract

“…Ants use various environmental cues and innate abilities, such as a combination of polarized light and step integrator, to estimate their location in respect to the nest; they can also use landmarks and their innate sense of direction in order to choose the shortest path back to the nest, following food discovery [47][48][49][50]. Mazes have been traditionally used to test exploration and spatial learning in ants [27,[51][52][53][54][55]. Studies using mazes have demonstrated, for example, that foraging ants can learn a sequence of landmarks that guide them back to the nest in a maze [56][57].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-spatial information on the presence of food elevates search intensity in ant workers, leading to faster maze solving in a process parallel to spatial learning

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Experience can lead to faster exploitation of food patches through spatial learning or other parallel processes. Past studies have indicated that hungry animals either search more intensively for food or learn better how to detect it. However, fewer studies have examined the contribution of non-spatial information on the presence of food nearby to maze solving, as a parallel process to spatial learning. We exposed Cataglyphis niger ant workers to a food reward and then let them search for food in a maze. The information that food existed nearby, even without spatial information, led to faster maze solving compared to a control group that was not exposed to the food prior to the experiment. Faster solving is probably achieved by a higher number of workers entering the maze, following the information that food is present nearby. In a second experiment, we allowed the ants to make successive searches in the maze, followed by removing them after they had returned to the nest and interacted with their naïve nestmates. This procedure led to a maze-solving time in-between that displayed when removing the workers immediately after they had reached the food and preventing their return to the colony, and that of no removal. The workers that interacted upon returning to the nest might have transferred to naïve workers information, unrelated to spatial learning, that food existed nearby, and driven them to commence searching. Spatial learning, or an increase in the correct movements leading to the food reward relative to those leading to dead-ends, was only evident when the same workers were allowed to search again in the same maze. However, both non-spatial information on the presence of food that elevated search intensity and spatial learning led to faster maze solving. OPEN ACCESSCitation: Bega D, Samocha Y, Yitzhak N, Saar M, Subach A, Scharf I (2020) Non-spatial information on the presence of food elevates search intensity in ant workers, leading to faster maze solving in a process parallel to spatial learning. PLoS ONE 15 (2): e0229709. https://doi.org/10.We collected 59 colonies of Cataglyphis niger from the Tel-Baruch sand dunes in Tel Aviv, Israel (32.132N, 34.788E), a public land. These sand dunes are an enclave of a disturbed natural Non-spatial information and maze solving in ants PLOS ONE | https://doi.

show abstract

Using T- and Y-mazes in myrmecology and elsewhere: a practical guide

Cited by 30 publications

References 96 publications

Trail Pheromone Does Not Modulate Subjective Reward Evaluation in Lasius niger Ants

Trail Pheromone Does Not Modulate Subjective Reward Evaluation in Lasius niger Ants

Uneven substrates constrain walking speed in ants through modulation of stride frequency more than stride length

Non-spatial information on the presence of food elevates search intensity in ant workers, leading to faster maze solving in a process parallel to spatial learning

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About