Heusser Daniel, Wehner Rüdiger
Department of Zoology, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
J Exp Biol. 2002 Mar;205(Pt 5):585-90. doi: 10.1242/jeb.205.5.585.
When negotiating their way through cluttered environments, desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, tend to run along the midlines of the alleys formed by adjacent low shrubs. This 'centring response' was investigated by inducing foraging ants to walk through artificial channels. The sidewalls of the channel were either homogeneously black or provided with stationary or moving black-and-white gratings. The speed of motion and the spatial period of the gratings and the height of the walls could be varied independently on the left-hand and right-hand sides of the channel. The results clearly show that the ants, while exhibiting their centring responses, try to balance neither the self-induced image speeds nor the contrast frequencies seen in their left and right visual fields, but the vertical angle subtended by the landmarks on either side. When manoeuvring through the channel, the ants always adjust the lateral positions of their walking trajectories in such a way that the vertical angles subtended by the walls are identical for both eyes.
在杂乱的环境中穿行时，沙漠蚂蚁（猫蚁）往往会沿着相邻低矮灌木形成的小径中线奔跑。通过诱导觅食蚂蚁走过人工通道，对这种“居中反应”进行了研究。通道的侧壁要么是均匀的黑色，要么设有静止或移动的黑白光栅。光栅的运动速度、空间周期以及壁的高度可以在通道的左侧和右侧独立变化。结果清楚地表明，蚂蚁在表现出居中反应时，既不试图平衡自身引起的图像速度，也不试图平衡左右视野中看到的对比度频率，而是平衡两侧地标所张的垂直角度。在通道中 maneuvering 时，蚂蚁总是以这样一种方式调整其行走轨迹的横向位置，即两眼看到的壁所张的垂直角度是相同的。 （manoeuvring 原词有误，推测为 maneuvering，意为“操纵、移动” ，这里根据语境灵活翻译为“穿行” ）
