Large-scale navigational map in a mammal
Large-scale navigational map in a mammal
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1107365108
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发表时间：
2011-09-13
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Ulanovsky, Nachum
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Tsoar, Asaf;Nathan, Ran;Ulanovsky, Nachum
导航，即到达所需目标位置的能力，对动物和人类至关重要。动物导航已经在鸟类、昆虫和一些海洋脊椎动物和无脊椎动物中进行了广泛的研究，但我们仍然远未阐明其他分类群体，特别是哺乳动物的潜在机制。在这里，我们报告了一个系统的研究机制的远程哺乳动物导航。高分辨率的全球定位系统对蝙蝠的跟踪在这里进行，这揭示了埃及果蝠（Rousettus aegyptiacus）从洞穴到偏远果树的高，快速和非常直的通勤航班。蝙蝠每晚都回到同一棵树上。当向南迁移44公里时，蝙蝠直接回到两个目标位置之一熟悉的果树或洞穴排除了信标，路线跟踪或路径整合机制。蝙蝠释放84公里以南，在一个深的天然火山口，最初迷失方向（但最终离开了火山口对回家的方向，并成功地回家），而蝙蝠在火山口边缘顶部直接回家，这表明导航主要由远端视觉地标引导。总之，这些结果提供了一个大规模的“认知地图”，使导航的哺乳动物在其视觉熟悉的区域内的证据，他们也证明了回家的能力时，易位在视觉熟悉的区域之外。
Navigation, the ability to reach desired goal locations, is critical for animals and humans. Animal navigation has been studied extensively in birds, insects, and some marine vertebrates and invertebrates, yet we are still far from elucidating the underlying mechanisms in other taxonomic groups, especially mammals. Here we report a systematic study of the mechanisms of long-range mammalian navigation. High-resolution global positioning system tracking of bats was conducted here, which revealed high, fast, and very straight commuting flights of Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) from their cave to remote fruit trees. Bats returned to the same individual trees night after night. When displaced 44 km south, bats homed directly to one of two goal locations-familiar fruit tree or cave-ruling out beaconing, route-following, or path-integration mechanisms. Bats released 84 km south, within a deep natural crater, were initially disoriented (but eventually left the crater toward the home direction and homed successfully), whereas bats released at the crater-edge top homed directly, suggesting navigation guided primarily by distal visual landmarks. Taken together, these results provide evidence for a large-scale "cognitive map" that enables navigation of a mammal within its visually familiar area, and they also demonstrate the ability to home back when translocated outside the visually familiar area.