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22 September 2016 Multiple orientation cues in an Australian trunk-trail-forming ant, Iridomyrmex purpureus
Ashley Card, Caitlin McDermott, Ajay Narendra
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Abstract

Ants use multiple cues for navigating to a food source or nest location. Directional information is derived from pheromone trails or visual landmarks or celestial objects. Some ants use the celestial compass information along with an ‘odometer’ to determine the shortest distance home, a strategy known as path integration. Some trail-following ants utilise visual landmark information whereas few of the solitary-foraging ants rely on both path integration and visual landmark information. However, it is unknown to what degree trail-following ants use path integration and we investigated this in a trunk-trail-following ant, Iridomyrmex purpureus. Trunk-trail ants connect their nests to food sites with pheromone trails that contain long-lasting orientation information. We determined the use of visual landmarks and the ability to path integrate in a trunk-trail forming ant. We found that experienced animals switch to relying on visual landmark information, and naïve individuals rely on odour trails. Ants displaced to unfamiliar locations relied on path integration, but, surprisingly, they did not travel the entire homebound distance. We found that as the homebound distance increased, the distance ants travelled relying on the path integrator reduced.

© CSIRO 2016
Ashley Card, Caitlin McDermott, and Ajay Narendra "Multiple orientation cues in an Australian trunk-trail-forming ant, Iridomyrmex purpureus," Australian Journal of Zoology 64(3), 227-232, (22 September 2016). https://doi.org/10.1071/ZO16046
Received: 1 June 2016; Accepted: 1 August 2016; Published: 22 September 2016
KEYWORDS
celestial compass
experience
landmarks
naïve
navigation
path integration
pheromone
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