Popp Stefan, Dornhaus Anna
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
iScience. 2023 Jan 30;26(2):105916. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105916. eCollection 2023 Feb 17.
Animal search movements are typically assumed to be mostly random walks, although non-random elements may be widespread. We tracked ants () in a large empty arena, resulting in almost 5 km of trajectories. We tested for meandering by comparing the turn autocorrelations for empirical ant tracks and simulated, realistic Correlated Random Walks. We found that 78% of ants show significant negative autocorrelation around 10 mm (3 body lengths). This means that turns in one direction are likely followed by turns in the opposite direction after this distance. This meandering likely makes the search more efficient, as it allows ants to avoid crossing their own paths while staying close to the nest, avoiding return-travel time. Combining systematic search with stochastic elements may make the strategy less vulnerable to directional inaccuracies. This study is the first to find evidence for efficient search by regular meandering in a freely searching animal.
动物的搜索运动通常被认为大多是随机游走，尽管非随机元素可能广泛存在。我们在一个大型空旷场地中追踪蚂蚁（），得到了近5公里的轨迹。我们通过比较经验性蚂蚁轨迹与模拟的、现实的相关随机游走的转弯自相关性来测试曲折情况。我们发现78%的蚂蚁在约10毫米（3个身体长度）左右显示出显著的负自相关性。这意味着在这个距离之后，一个方向的转弯很可能接着是相反方向的转弯。这种曲折可能使搜索更有效，因为它使蚂蚁在靠近巢穴的同时避免穿过自己的路径，避免返程时间。将系统搜索与随机元素相结合可能使该策略较少受到方向不准确的影响。这项研究首次发现了自由搜索的动物通过规则曲折进行高效搜索的证据。
