Freas Cody A, Fleischmann Pauline N, Cheng Ken
Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Canada.
Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology (Zoology II), Biozentrum, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, Würzburg, 97074, Germany.
Behav Processes. 2019 Jan;158:181-191. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2018.12.001. Epub 2018 Dec 5.
Foraging desert ants are repeatedly presented with the challenge of leaving the nest, searching the scorching desert landscape to find food, and then transporting it back home. To accomplish this task, foragers have a navigational toolbox, which relies on olfactory, idiothetic, visual and magnetic cues. Desert ants have been widely studied with regards to these abilities, including a heavy focus on learned visual cues, the most prominent being the terrestrial panorama. Nest cues are first acquired during pre-foraging learning walks. Once foragers leave the nest area, they also learn a number of cues to aid them when returning both back to the nest and to known food sites, using experience of previous trips to navigate on future trips. In this review, we describe the learning processes involved in accurate navigation in desert ants. We first focus on recent research on nest-site panorama learning during pre-foraging learning walks as well as panorama learning away from the nest during foraging. We also review learning cues beyond the terrestrial panorama, including tactile, magnetic, olfactory and vibrational cues. These studies provide a basis for future work to further explore how these navigators, despite their small brains, acquire, retain and use many cue sets present in their environments. We call for more experimental ethology focussed on learning processes, both by exploring run-by-run and step-by-step acquisition of information for navigation, as well as for other natural tasks in an animal's life.
离开巢穴，在酷热的沙漠环境中寻找食物，然后将食物运回巢穴。为了完成这项任务，觅食者拥有一个导航工具箱，它依赖嗅觉、自身运动感知、视觉和磁线索。关于这些能力，沙漠蚂蚁已经得到了广泛研究，其中重点大量放在了习得的视觉线索上，最突出的是地面全景。巢穴线索首先是在觅食前的学习行走过程中获得的。一旦觅食者离开巢穴区域，它们还会学习一些线索，以便在返回巢穴和已知食物地点时帮助自己，利用之前行程的经验来为未来行程导航。在这篇综述中，我们描述了沙漠蚂蚁精确导航所涉及的学习过程。我们首先关注近期关于觅食前学习行走期间巢穴地点全景学习以及觅食期间远离巢穴的全景学习的研究。我们还综述了除地面全景之外的学习线索，包括触觉、磁、嗅觉和振动线索。这些研究为未来的工作提供了基础，以便进一步探索这些导航者尽管大脑很小，是如何获取、保留和利用其环境中存在的许多线索集的。我们呼吁开展更多专注于学习过程的实验行为学研究，既通过探索逐次和逐步获取导航信息，也通过探索动物生活中其他自然任务的相关信息。
