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First published online August 23, 2004
Journal of Experimental Biology 207, 3431-3439 (2004)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2004
doi: 10.1242/jeb.01159

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Navigation in wood ants Formica japonica: context dependent use of landmarks

Tsukasa Fukushi^1,* and Rüdiger Wehner²

¹ Department of Biology, Miyagi University of Education, Aramaki-aza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-0845, Japan
² Department of Zoology, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: t-fuku{at}staff.miyakyo-u.ac.jp)

Accepted 22 June 2004

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.

Key words: ant, Formica japonica, landmark guidance, navigation, path integration

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