A biorobotic approach to modelling celestial cue integration in ball-rolling dung beetles

一种生物机器人方法来模拟滚球粪甲虫的天体提示整合

• 批准号: 2264699
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2264699
• 关键词: biorobotic; approach; modelling; celestial; cue

This project aims to explore biologically plausible computational models whichmay explain the mechanisms by which dung beetles can maintain a straight bearingwith reference to multiple sky cues as a compass reference. The initial approachis centred on producing an accurate computer simulation of the dung beetle dorsaleye view when presented with different patterns of light with the hypothesis thatthe structure of the beetle eye and immediate optical pathway governs the cueintegration and cue preference differences observed between species. Thispreprocessing will be used to generate a plausible encoding which can be used asinput to the Central Complex model; a model of the Central Complex neuralstructure, thought to be the orientation centre of the beetle brain. While acomputational model is the goal, I aim to implement any resultant model on arobot platform to provide performance data under real skylight conditions.The question arises from studies in behavioural biology conducted at LundUniversity regarding South African ball-rolling dung beetles; specifically, theirorientation behaviour when rolling dung away from the dung pile. Ball-rollingdung beetles use dung for a few purposes, notably as a food source.There is therefore serious competition over the valuable resource. Once a beetlehas formed its ball of dung it picks a direction and rolls the ball away in astraight line to quickly maximise its distance from the dung pile.Dung beetles (like humans) need some external reference to maintain theirbearing. Mounting evidence shows that the reference in use is the sky. Dungbeetles were first shown to use the sun as a directional prompt by Byrne et al.in 2003 but have since been shown to use a variety of celestial cues to maintaintheir straight-line orientation, including: the position of the Moon/Sun, acelestial colour spectrum, the pattern of light polarisation caused by Moon/Sunlight filtering through the atmosphere, and even the the Milky Way galaxy in thesky (visible from their natural habitat). Currently, we understand that theavailable cues are combined in some way and that there is some inherentpreference for different cues between different species; however, there is nobiologically plausible computational model which adequately describes all of theobserved behaviours; this project aims to develop and explore such models.

本项目旨在探索生物学上合理的计算模型，这些模型可以解释金龟子通过参考多个天空线索作为指南针参考来保持直线方位的机制。最初的方法是集中在产生一个准确的计算机模拟的蜣螂dorsaleye视图时，提出了不同的光模式的假设，即结构的甲虫眼睛和直接的光学通路支配cueintegration和cue偏好的物种之间观察到的差异。这种预处理将被用来生成一个合理的编码，可以用作中央复合体模型的输入;中央复合体神经结构的模型，被认为是甲虫大脑的定位中心。虽然计算模型是目标，我的目标是实现任何结果模型arobot平台上提供性能数据下真实的skylight conditions.The问题出现在行为生物学的研究在隆德大学进行的关于南非球滚粪甲虫;具体来说，theirorientation行为时，滚粪远离粪堆。滚球蜣螂利用粪便有几个目的，特别是作为食物来源。因此，对这一宝贵资源的竞争非常激烈。一旦甲虫形成了粪球，它会选择一个方向，并将粪球沿直线滚走，以迅速扩大与粪堆的距离。粪甲虫（像人类一样）需要一些外部参照物来保持它们的方位。越来越多的证据表明，在使用的参考是天空。2003年，Byrne et al.in首次展示了邓甲虫使用太阳作为方向提示，但此后已被证明使用各种天体线索来确定其直线方向，包括：月亮/太阳的位置，无光泽的色谱，月亮/太阳光过滤通过大气引起的光偏振模式，甚至是天空中的银河系（从它们的自然栖息地可见）。目前，我们了解到可用的线索以某种方式结合在一起，并且不同物种之间存在对不同线索的内在偏好;然而，没有生物学上合理的计算模型可以充分描述所有观察到的行为;本项目旨在开发和探索此类模型。