Comparative studies of navigation and decision making

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My research aims to advance the understanding of processes that are critical for effective interaction with the environment in humans and non-humans. My current focus is on 1) navigating to important places, and 2) decisions involving risky effort. Accurate navigation can be critical to survival for moving animals. Ants that forage alone are popular for the study of navigation as they are expert navigators despite having such small brains. We are studying navigation in the desert harvester ant (Veromessor pergandei), which first travels from the nest in a group along a pheromone column. At the end of the column, ants fan out to forage for food and must navigate back to the column alone. Our research suggests that their navigational strategies show similarities to other species, but they accomplish these feats using very different location-defining markers. We are now directly comparing V. pergandei navigation with the individually-foraging, previously unstudied Novomessor cockerelli, which lives in the same habitat but does not form columns. Our findings will increase knowledge of animal behaviour and inform models of artificial navigation. Effective decision making by individuals and groups is also important for interacting with the world. We are currently studying decisions that involve effort. When actions lead to the same outcome, cost-benefit analysis and optimal foraging predict that the least effortful option should be preferred. However, people and other animals sometimes value outcomes more after expending effort ("Ikea effect") and sometimes choose more effortful options. Little is known about decisions involving risky effort. Our research addresses questions such as whether people prefer safe or risky amounts of effort, whether choice for risky effort follows the same principles as choice for risky reward amounts, and how energy budget affects effort-based risky choice. In other studies, we will present choices that vary in immediacy of effort and consequences for self and others, to simulate societally important decisions. We will also explore decisions involving risky effort in both individually and socially foraging ants. As climate becomes less stable, variability in resources and the effort required to obtain them may become a frequent problem for humans and other animals. Because individual and collective decisions often involve some element of risk, understanding how people and other animals choose when actions or outcomes are risky is important. Our results will have theoretical value for psychology, biology, and behavioural economics, and will provide important groundwork for other levels of analysis such as neuroscience and evolutionary modelling. The results could have national and international translational value for the development of biologically-inspired autonomous systems focusing on miniaturization and group navigational communication, or for understanding and encouraging societally beneficial decision making.