Fukushi Tsukasa, Wehner Rüdiger
Department of Biology, Miyagi University of Education, Aramaki-aza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-0845, Japan.
J Exp Biol. 2004 Sep;207(Pt 19):3431-9. doi: 10.1242/jeb.01159.
Wood ants Formica japonica can steer their outbound (foraging) and inbound (homing) courses without using celestial compass information, by relying exclusively on landmark cues. This is shown by training ants to run back and forth between the nest and an artificial feeder, and later displacing the trained ants either from the nest (when starting their foraging runs: outbound full-vector ants) or from the feeder (when starting their home runs: inbound full-vector ants) to various nearby release sites. In addition, ants that have already completed their foraging and homing runs are displaced after arrival either at the feeder (outbound zero-vector ants) or at the nest (inbound zero-vector ants), respectively, to the very same release sites. Upon release, the full-vector ants steer their straight courses by referring to panoramic landmark cues, while the zero-vector ants presented with the very same visual scenery immediately search for local landmark cues defining their final goal. Hence, it depends on the context, in this case on the state of the forager's round-trip cycle, what visual cues are picked out from a given set of landmarks and used for navigation.
日本木工蚁（Formica japonica）能够完全依靠地标线索来引导其外出（觅食）和返回（归巢）路线，而无需使用天体罗盘信息。这一点通过以下方式得以证明：训练蚂蚁在巢穴和人工喂食器之间来回奔跑，之后将经过训练的蚂蚁从巢穴（当它们开始觅食奔跑时：外出全向量蚂蚁）或从喂食器（当它们开始归巢奔跑时：返回全向量蚂蚁）转移到附近的各个释放地点。此外，已经完成觅食和归巢奔跑的蚂蚁在分别到达喂食器（外出零向量蚂蚁）或巢穴（返回零向量蚂蚁）后，被转移到相同的释放地点。释放后，全向量蚂蚁通过参考全景地标线索来引导其直线路线，而面对相同视觉场景的零向量蚂蚁则立即寻找定义其最终目标的局部地标线索。因此，取决于具体情境，在这种情况下取决于觅食者往返周期的状态，从给定的一组地标中挑选出哪些视觉线索并用于导航。
