Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation
Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2012.12.034
复制
发表时间：
2013-02-18
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
Warrant, Eric J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dacke, Marie;Baird, Emily;Warrant, Eric J.
当夜空中没有月亮时，星星仍然是天体的视觉线索。尽管如此，已知只有鸟类 [1, 2]、海豹 [3] 和人类 [4] 使用星星进行定向。非洲滚球粪甲虫利用太阳、月亮和天体偏振模式沿着直线路径移动，远离粪便堆的激烈竞争[5-9]。即使在晴朗的无月之夜，许多甲虫仍然设法沿着笔直的路径定位[5]。这使我们推测粪甲虫利用星空来确定方向，据我们所知，这一壮举从未在昆虫中得到证实。在这里，我们展示了粪甲虫在星空下沿着笔直的路径运输粪球，但在阴天条件下失去了这种能力。在天文馆中，甲虫在满天星光下滚动时的定向效果与只有银河系存在时的定向效果一样好。已经有人提议将这种双向天体提示用于脊椎动物 [10]、蜘蛛 [11] 和昆虫 [5, 12]，但从未得到证实。这一发现首次令人信服地证明了昆虫利用星空进行定向，并首次在动物王国中利用银河进行定向。
When the moon is absent from the night sky, stars remain as celestial visual cues. Nonetheless, only birds [1, 2], seals [3], and humans [4] are known to use stars for orientation. African ball-rolling dung beetles exploit the sun, the moon, and the celestial polarization pattern to move along straight paths, away from the intense competition at the dung pile [5-9]. Even on clear moonless nights, many beetles still manage to orientate along straight paths [5]. This led us to hypothesize that dung beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation, a feat that has, to our knowledge, never been demonstrated in an insect. Here, we show that dung beetles transport their dung balls along straight paths under a starlit sky but lose this ability under overcast conditions. In a planetarium, the beetles orientate equally well when rolling under a full starlit sky as when only the Milky Way is present. The use of this bidirectional celestial cue for orientation has been proposed for vertebrates [10], spiders [11], and insects [5, 12], but never proven. This finding represents the first convincing demonstration for the use of the starry sky for orientation in insects and provides the first documented use of the Milky Way for orientation in the animal kingdom.