Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210006, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0006, USA.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2012 Dec;198(12):905-13. doi: 10.1007/s00359-012-0761-y. Epub 2012 Sep 29.
Movement and searching behaviors at diverse spatial scales are important for understanding how animals interact with their environment. Although the shapes of branches and the voids in arboreal habitats seem likely to affect searching behaviors, their influence is poorly understood. To gain insights into how both environmental structure and the attributes of an animal may affect movement and searching, we compared the three-dimensional exploratory movements of snakes in the dark on two simulated arboreal surfaces (disc and horizontal cylinder). Most of the exploratory movements of snakes in the dark were a small fraction of the distances they could reach while bridging gaps in the light. The snakes extended farther away from the edge of the supporting surface at the ends of the cylinder than from the sides of the cylinder or from any direction from the surface of the disc. The exploratory movements were not random, and the surface shape and three-dimensional directions had significant interactive effects on how the movements were structured in time. Thus, the physical capacity for reaching did not limit the area that was explored, but the shape of the supporting surface and the orientation relative to gravity did create biased searching patterns.
在不同的空间尺度上的运动和搜索行为对于理解动物如何与环境相互作用非常重要。尽管树枝的形状和树木栖息地中的空隙似乎会影响搜索行为，但它们的影响还不太清楚。为了深入了解环境结构和动物属性如何影响运动和搜索，我们比较了蛇在黑暗中在两种模拟树木栖息地表面（圆盘和水平圆柱体）上的三维探索运动。在黑暗中，蛇的大部分探索运动仅占它们在光下跨越间隙时可以到达的距离的一小部分。与圆柱体的侧面或从圆盘表面的任何方向相比，蛇在圆柱体末端从支撑表面的边缘延伸得更远。探索性运动不是随机的，表面形状和三维方向对运动在时间上的结构有显著的交互作用。因此，到达的物理能力并没有限制被探索的区域，但是支撑表面的形状和相对于重力的方向确实会产生有偏差的搜索模式。
