Development of Sun Compass Orientation: An Invertebrate Model for the Study of Spatial Cognition

戴尔960452 5 科学中最令人兴奋的前沿领域之一是关于动物的神经系统如何利用有关它们必须生存和繁殖的自然环境的信息的问题。在昆虫中研究这个问题提供了一个希望，即考虑到神经系统的相对较小的尺寸，我们可能迟早会在神经水平上理解这种认知现象。 然而，第一步是找到昆虫有趣的认知过程的证据，并描述这些过程支持的行为能力。这个项目通过考虑蜜蜂如何学习太阳的日常运动模式来接受这一挑战。各种各样的动物物种，包括脊椎动物和无脊椎动物，都把太阳当作真正的指南针，这需要补偿太阳相对于地球环境特征的运动。为了适应季节和纬度的变化，大多数动物学习当地太阳运动的模式。关于这个学习过程所知甚少的是，动物不仅仅是记住一天中不同时间经历的太阳位置。 相反，在一些脊椎动物和无脊椎动物物种中，包括蜜蜂，动物已经被证明在白天（或晚上）的时候估计太阳的位置，而它们从未见过它。这种现象作为行为分析的焦点非常有吸引力。动物表现出一种明显的“认知”学习形式，获得对环境模式的内部表征，其中至少部分包含在表征中的信息是通过计算而不是通过直接经验获得的。这个项目中的实验旨在更全面地描述蜜蜂对太阳运动的了解以及它们是如何学习的。一个主要的重点将是研究蜜蜂对太阳运动的一般特征的先天知识与她通过经验获得的信息之间的相互作用。长期目标是获得有助于全面了解动物空间定向认知基础的见解。

Dyer 960452 5 One of the most exciting frontiers in science concerns the problem of how the nervous systems of animals and use information about the natural environments in which they must survive and reproduce. Studying this problem in insects offers the hope that given the relatively small size of the nervous system, we might understand such cognitive phenomena on the neural level sooner than later. A first step, however, is to find evidence of interesting cognitive processes in insects, and to characterize the behavioral capacities that these processes support. This project takes on this challenge by considering how honey bees learn the daily pattern of movement of the sun. A wide variety of animal species, both vertebrate and invertebrate, use the sun as a true compass, which requires compensating for its movement relative to earth-bound features of the environment. To compensate at a rate that is appropriate for the season and latitude at which they are living, most animals learn the current local pattern of solar movement. What little is known about this learning process suggests that animals do not merely memorize a list of solar positions experienced at different times of day. Instead, in several vertebrate and invertebrate species, including honey bees, animals have been shown to estimate the sun's position at times of day (or night) when they have never seen it. This phenomenon is extremely attractive as a focus for behavioral analysis. The animals exhibit an apparently "cognitive" form of learning, acquiring an internal representation of an environmental pattern in which at least part of the information contained in the representation is derived through computation rather than through direct experience. The experiments in this project are designed to characterize more fully just what honey bees learn about the sun's course and how they learn it. A major focus will be to study the interaction between a bee's inborn knowledge of gen eral features of solar movement and information that she acquires through experience. A long-term goal is to obtain insights that can contribute to a general understanding of the cognitive basis of spatial orientation in animals.