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的关键过程的理解。我现在的重点是：1)导航到重要的地方；2)做决定需要冒险。准确的导航对移动动物的生存至关重要。单独觅食的蚂蚁在导航研究中很受欢迎，因为它们是导航专家，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，它首先沿着信息素柱成群结队地从巢穴出发。在队列的末端，蚂蚁散开寻找食物，必须独自导航回到队列。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。我们现在直接比较了V. pergandei和独立觅食的noomessor cockerelli，它们生活在相同的栖息地，但不形成柱状。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。个人和团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策。当行动导致相同的结果时，成本效益分析和最优觅食预测，最不费力的选择应该被首选。然而，人类和其他动物有时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。人们对涉及冒险行为的决策知之甚少。我们的研究解决了一些问题，比如人们是更喜欢安全的努力还是有风险的努力，选择有风险的努力是否遵循与选择有风险的回报量相同的原则，以及能量预算如何影响基于努力的风险选择。在其他的研究中，我们将提出不同的选择，在直接的努力和后果对自己和他人，模拟社会重要的决定。我们还将探讨个体和群体觅食蚂蚁的冒险行为。随着气候变得越来越不稳定，资源的变化和获取资源所需的努力可能成为人类和其他动物经常面临的问题。因为个人和集体的决定往往涉及一些风险因素，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（如神经科学和进化模型）提供重要的基础。这些结果可能具有国内和国际的翻译价值，用于开发以生物为灵感的自主系统，重点是小型化和群体导航通信，或者用于理解和鼓励对社会有益的决策。

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.