Schatz B, Lachaud JP, Beugnon G
Laboratoire d'Ethologie et Psychologie Animale, UMR-CNRS 5550, Universite Paul-Sabatier, F-31062 Toulouse Cedex, France, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK and El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Apdo Postal 36,
J Exp Biol. 1999 Jul;202 (Pt 14):1897-907. doi: 10.1242/jeb.202.14.1897.
We tested, under field and laboratory conditions, whether the neotropical ant Ectatomma ruidum Roger can learn several associations between temporal and spatial changes in the daily pattern of food availability. Honey was shuffled between two or three feeding sites following a fixed daily schedule. Foragers learnt to associate particular sites with the specific times at which food was available, individually marked ants being observed on the correct sites at the correct times. Some ants anticipated the time of food delivery by approximately 30 min, and it was not necessary for them to be rewarded at the first stage of the sequence of food collection to continue their search for honey according to the correct schedule of reward. Ants also followed the same schedule when no honey was supplied at each stage of the sequence, and they stayed at the expected unrewarded site for a period equivalent to the reward period of the corresponding training phase, indicating that they had learnt when and for how long the food was available. Thus, ants rely on their spatio-temporal memory rather than on local cues coming from the honey source to guide them.
我们在野外和实验室条件下测试了新热带区蚂蚁Ectatomma ruidum Roger是否能学会食物供应日常模式中时间和空间变化之间的几种关联。按照固定的每日时间表，蜂蜜在两三个喂食地点之间变换位置。觅食者学会了将特定地点与食物可得的特定时间联系起来，在正确的时间能观察到个体标记的蚂蚁出现在正确的地点。一些蚂蚁会提前约30分钟预测食物送达时间，而且在食物收集序列的第一阶段没有得到奖励的情况下，它们也没有必要按照正确的奖励时间表继续寻找蜂蜜。当序列的每个阶段都不提供蜂蜜时，蚂蚁也遵循相同的时间表，并且它们会在预期没有奖励的地点停留相当于相应训练阶段奖励期的时长，这表明它们已经学会了食物何时可得以及可得多长时间。因此，蚂蚁依靠它们的时空记忆而非来自蜂蜜源的局部线索来引导自己。
