Ant odometry in the third dimension
Ant odometry in the third dimension
复制标题
三维蚂蚁里程计
作者：
S. Wohlgemuth;B. Ronacher;R. Wehner
沙漠蚂蚁（Cataglyphis）以其进行大规模觅食远足并通过路径整合返回巢穴的能力而闻名。它们通过将航向和行驶距离整合成一个不断更新的归航矢量来实现这一点。而角度方向是基于天窗的线索，蚂蚁是如何测量移动距离的，这在很大程度上仍然不清楚。此外，几乎所有关于Cataglyphis以及蜘蛛、啮齿动物和人类的路径整合的研究都旨在了解动物如何在水平面上计算回家的路线。在这里，我们首次研究了动物的里程表是如何工作的，当路径整合任务必须完成，其中包括一个垂直组件。我们在上坡和下坡的通道阵列中训练Cataglyphis蚂蚁，然后在平坦的地形上测试它们，反之亦然。在所有这些情况下，蚂蚁表示的归巢距离与实际移动的距离不对应，而是与地面距离对应；也就是说，蚂蚁的上坡和下坡路径的水平投影之和。
Desert ants (Cataglyphis) are renowned for their ability to perform large-scale foraging excursions and then return to the nest by path integration. They do so by integrating courses steered and the distances travelled into a continually updated home vector. Whereas the angular orientation is based on skylight cues, how the ants gauge the distances travelled has remained largely unclear. Furthermore, almost all studies on path integration in Cataglyphis, as well as in spiders, rodents, and humans, have aimed at understanding how the animals compute homebound courses in the horizontal plane. Here, we investigate for the first time how an animal's odometer operates when a path integration task has to be accomplished that includes a vertical component. We trained Cataglyphis ants within arrays of uphill and downhill channels, and later tested them on flat terrain, or vice versa. In all these cases, the ants indicated homing distances that corresponded not to the distances actually travelled but to the ground distances; that is, to the sum of the horizontal projections of the uphill and downhill segments of the ants' paths.