Wehner R
Department of Zoology, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2003 Aug;189(8):579-88. doi: 10.1007/s00359-003-0431-1. Epub 2003 Jul 23.
This essay presents and discusses the state of the art in studies of desert ant (Cataglyphis) navigation. In dealing with behavioural performances, neural mechanisms, and ecological functions these studies ultimately aim at an evolutionary understanding of the insect's navigational toolkit: its skylight (polarization) compass, its path integrator, its view-dependent ways of recognizing places and following landmark routes, and its strategies of flexibly interlinking these modes of navigation to generate amazingly rich behavioural outputs. The general message is that Cataglyphis uses path integration as an egocentric guideline to acquire continually updated spatial information about places and routes. Hence, it relies on procedural knowledge, and largely context-dependent retrieval of such knowledge, rather than on all-embracing geocentred representations of space.
本文介绍并讨论了沙漠蚂蚁（箭蚁属）导航研究的最新进展。在研究行为表现、神经机制和生态功能时，这些研究最终旨在从进化的角度理解昆虫的导航工具包：其天窗（偏振）罗盘、路径积分器、依赖视觉识别地点和沿着地标路线行进的方式，以及灵活地将这些导航模式相互联系以产生极其丰富的行为输出的策略。总的来说，箭蚁利用路径积分作为以自我为中心的指导方针，不断获取有关地点和路线的空间信息。因此，它依赖于程序性知识，以及很大程度上依赖上下文的此类知识检索，而不是依赖于包罗万象的以地球为中心的空间表征。
