Comparative studies of navigation and decision making

我的研究旨在促进对人类和非人类与环境有效互动至关重要的过程的理解。我目前的重点是1）导航到重要的地方，2）涉及风险努力的决定。 准确的导航对移动动物的生存至关重要。独自觅食的蚂蚁在导航研究中很受欢迎，因为它们是专业的导航员，尽管它们的大脑很小。我们正在研究沙漠收获蚁（Veromessor pergandei）的导航，它首先从巢穴中沿着一个信息素柱行进。在柱子的末端，蚂蚁散开寻找食物，必须独自回到柱子上。我们的研究表明，它们的导航策略与其他物种相似，但它们使用非常不同的定位标记来完成这些壮举。我们现在直接比较V. pergandei导航与单独觅食，以前未研究的Novomessor cockerelli，生活在同一栖息地，但不形成列。我们的发现将增加对动物行为的了解，并为人工导航模型提供信息。 个人和群体的有效决策对于与世界互动也很重要。我们目前正在研究涉及努力的决定。当行动导致相同的结果时，成本效益分析和最佳觅食预测，最不费力的选择应该是首选。然而，人类和其他动物有时会在付出努力后更看重结果（“宜家效应”），有时会选择更努力的选择。人们对涉及冒险努力的决策知之甚少。我们的研究解决的问题，如人们是否更喜欢安全或风险的努力量，是否选择风险的努力遵循相同的原则作为选择风险的奖励金额，以及如何能源预算影响基于努力的风险选择。在其他研究中，我们将提出不同的努力和后果对自己和他人的即时性的选择，以模拟社会上重要的决定。我们还将探讨涉及个体和社会觅食蚂蚁的冒险努力的决定。随着气候变得不那么稳定，资源的可变性和获得资源所需的努力可能成为人类和其他动物经常遇到的问题。由于个人和集体的决策往往涉及一些风险因素，因此了解人类和其他动物在行动或结果有风险时如何选择是很重要的。 我们的研究结果将对心理学，生物学和行为经济学具有理论价值，并将为其他层次的分析，如神经科学和进化建模提供重要的基础。研究结果可能对开发专注于小型化和群体导航通信的生物启发自主系统，或理解和鼓励社会有益的决策具有国家和国际转化价值。

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.