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Vector navigation in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis: celestial compass cues are essential for the proper use of distance information

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Abstract

Foraging desert ants navigate primarily by path integration. They continually update homing direction and distance by employing a celestial compass and an odometer. Here we address the question of whether information about travel distance is correctly used in the absence of directional information. By using linear channels that were partly covered to exclude celestial compass cues, we were able to test the distance component of the path-integration process while suppressing the directional information. Our results suggest that the path integrator cannot process the distance information accumulated by the odometer while ants are deprived of celestial compass information. Hence, during path integration directional cues are a prerequisite for the proper use of travel-distance information by ants.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 31-61844.00) and the G. and A. Claraz Foundation. The experiments comply with the current law of the country in which they were performed.

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  1. Institute of Zoology, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057, Zürich, Switzerland

    Stefan Sommer & Rüdiger Wehner

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  1. Stefan Sommer
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  2. Rüdiger Wehner
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Correspondence to Rüdiger Wehner.

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Sommer, S., Wehner, R. Vector navigation in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis: celestial compass cues are essential for the proper use of distance information. Naturwissenschaften 92, 468–471 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-005-0020-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-005-0020-y

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