Weighted cue integration for straight-line orientation

Shaverdian, Shahrzad; Dirlik, Elin; Mitchell, Robert J.; Tocco, Claudia; Webb, Barbara; Dacke, Marie

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105207

Cited by 7 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…However, under conditions where a spatial goal is reliably signalled by a salient landmark, the butterflies can flexibly change their strategy and rely on a single landmark to relocate a goal. This is consistent with recent findings in dung beetles that demonstrate similar dynamics in the cue hierarchy, but across different sensory modalities [70,71]. We found no hints that panoramic cues affected the butterflies’ performance in our experiments.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Monarch butterflies memorize the spatial location of a food source

Konnerth,

Foster,

el Jundi

et al. 2023

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Spatial memory helps animals to navigate familiar environments. In insects, spatial memory has extensively been studied in central place foragers such as ants and bees. However, if butterflies memorize a spatial location remains unclear. Here, we conducted behavioural experiments to test whether monarch butterflies ( Danaus plexippus ) can remember and retrieve the spatial location of a food source. We placed several visually identical feeders in a flight cage, with only one feeder providing sucrose solution. Across multiple days, individual butterflies predominantly visited the rewarding feeder. Next, we displaced a salient landmark close to the feeders to test which visual cue the butterflies used to relocate the rewarding feeder. While occasional landmark displacements were ignored by the butterflies and did not affect their decisions, systematic displacement of both the landmark and the rewarding feeder demonstrated that the butterflies associated the salient landmark with the feeder's position. Altogether, we show that butterflies consolidate and retrieve spatial memory in the context of foraging.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Monarch butterflies memorize the spatial location of a food source

Konnerth,

Foster,

el Jundi

et al. 2023

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…Cue integration research (our own included [9]) tends to assume Bayesian reasoning: a cue estimate includes information about the variance of the estimate (reliability), which is used to weight the cue [1,3]. However, the meaningfulness of a Bayes-optimal result is questionable [48] and the use of Bayesian modelling is disputed [49][50][51][52][53].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A previous study [9] suggested that the insect head direction circuit could act as a substrate for vector summation, making royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rspb Proc. R. Soc.…”

Section: (A) the Network Approximates The Angular Component Of A Vect...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent models of insect navigation have suggested that vector computation plays a major role in their behavioural capabilities [5,6] and more specifically that they perform reliability-weighted vector-based cue integration [7][8][9]. This idea has been bolstered by direct evidence that the insect central complex has the necessary circuit properties to support vector computations by representing vectors as sinusoid curves (vector phasor representation) in activity across a neural array [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Follow the link to access this repository and download our code/data. Additional experiments in our electronic supplementary material [55] use data previously published in Dacke et al [22] and Shaverdian et al [9] (used with author permission). This data is included in our repository for completeness (to allow others to replicate our analysis) and the sources are clearly marked.…”

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confidence: 99%

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A model of cue integration as vector summation in the insect brain

et al. 2023

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Ball-rolling dung beetles are known to integrate multiple cues in order to facilitate their straight-line orientation behaviour. Recent work has suggested that orientation cues are integrated according to a vector sum, that is, compass cues are represented by vectors and summed to give a combined orientation estimate. Further, cue weight (vector magnitude) appears to be set according to cue reliability. This is consistent with the popular Bayesian view of cue integration: cues are integrated to reduce or minimize an agent's uncertainty about the external world. Integration of orientation cues is believed to occur at the input to the insect central complex. Here, we demonstrate that a model of the head direction circuit of the central complex, including plasticity in input synapses, can act as a substrate for cue integration as vector summation. Further, we show that cue influence is not necessarily driven by cue reliability. Finally, we present a dung beetle behavioural experiment which, in combination with simulation, strongly suggests that these beetles do not weight cues according to reliability. We suggest an alternative strategy whereby cues are weighted according to relative contrast, which can also explain previous results.

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Polarization Vision and Orientation in Ball-Rolling Dung Beetles

Dacke,

el Jundi

2024

Springer Series in Vision Research

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Weighted cue integration for straight-line orientation

Cited by 7 publications

References 43 publications

Monarch butterflies memorize the spatial location of a food source

Monarch butterflies memorize the spatial location of a food source

A model of cue integration as vector summation in the insect brain

Polarization Vision and Orientation in Ball-Rolling Dung Beetles

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