How desert ants use a visual landmark for guidance along a habitual route
How desert ants use a visual landmark for guidance along a habitual route
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1001401107
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发表时间：
2010-06-22
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Collett, Matthew
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Collett, Matthew
许多动物学会了在重要地点之间遵循习惯路线，但它们是如何对路线进行编码的，这在很大程度上仍然是未知的。沙漠蚂蚁在它们的巢穴和食物点之间移动，形成了稳定的、视觉引导的路线，可以在不使用踪迹信息素的情况下蜿蜒穿过沙漠灌木丛。它们的路线记忆非常强大，如果一只蚁巢蚂蚁在路线结束时被抓住，并在之前的某个地方被替换，它会从释放点重新描述路线。昆虫似乎利用全景图来识别它们是否在熟悉的路线上。我在这里检查了当时用来指导他们的线索。已知有几种机制用于路线的直线段；但是，蚂蚁是如何编码一条弯曲的路线的呢？沿着这条路线，它所看到的景色和它所采取的方向都在不断变化。这里的结果表明，当一只蚂蚁在熟悉的路线上经过一个地标时，它会利用地标逐渐变化的方向来触发一组相关的学习方向。因此，如果将穿过复杂2D环境的路线划分为全景定义的路段，每个路段都由这种1D映射控制，则可以对其进行编码并经济地跟踪。为蚂蚁提出的解决方案很容易在自主机器人中实现。
Many animals learn to follow habitual routes between important locations, but how they encode their routes is still largely unknown. Desert ants traveling between their nest and a food site develop stable, visually guided routes that can wind through desert scrub without the use of trail pheromones. Their route memories are sufficiently robust that if a nest-bound ant is caught at the end of its route and replaced somewhere earlier along it, the ant will recapitulate the route from the release site. Insects appear to use panoramas to recognize when they are on a familiar route. I examine here the cues then used for their guidance. Several mechanisms are known for straight segments of a route; but how does an ant encode a curved route along which both the views it sees, and the directions it takes, are constantly changing? The results here suggest that when an ant travels past a landmark on a familiar route, it uses the gradually changing direction of the landmark to trigger a set of associated learned heading directions. A route through a complex 2D environment could thus be encoded and followed economically if it is divided into panorama-defined segments, with each segment controlled by such a 1D mapping. The solution proposed for the ants would be simple to implement in an autonomous robot.