|
| ![]() |
|
||
| Home Help Feedback Subscriptions Archive Search Table of Contents | ||||
First published online March 12, 2009
Journal of Experimental Biology 212, 901-905 (2009)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2009
doi: 10.1242/jeb.024539
Local and global navigational coordinate systems in desert ants
1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS,
UK
2 School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QG,
UK
* Author for correspondence (e-mail: matthew.collett{at}zoo.ox.ac.uk)
Accepted 16 December 2008
| Summary |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Key words: insect cognition, navigation, spatial learning, inverse model
| INTRODUCTION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
A habitual route could conceivably be encoded as a set of significant
global coordinates that mark the endpoints of route segments. A forager could
then set its course along a route by subtracting its current global
coordinates from the stored coordinates of the endpoint of its current
segment. But to use global coordinates in this way, an individual would have
to ensure that it had the appropriate global coordinates at the start of a
segment. Experiments suggest that honeybees and desert ants can use PI to
determine the end of a habitual route segment, even if manipulations alter the
amount of PI they have experienced between the nest and the start of the
segment (Collett et al., 2002
;
Srinivasan et al., 1997
;
Collett and Collett, 2009
). If
during such experimental manipulations an ant did use global coordinates to
encode a route segment and monitor its progress along the segment, then it
could reproduce the habitual segment only if, before beginning the segment, it
had reset its coordinates to a memory of the appropriate habitual value
(Cartwright and Collett, 1987
;
Srinivasan et al., 1997
). Do
ants reset their global coordinates at familiar locations?
When travelling homewards along a habitual route, desert ants do not reset
the global coordinates at familiar landmarks
(Andel and Wehner, 2003
;
Collett et al., 1998
;
Knaden and Wehner, 2005
). A
previous study also showed that an ant does not reset its global coordinates
at a habitual food site (Collett et al.,
2003
): the home vectors always reflected the route the ant had
just taken rather than a remembered value. In that study, however, the route
was entirely within a channel, and so there was no positive evidence that any
landmarks on the way to the feeder were recognized or used. We have repeated
this experiment, but under conditions in which ants are clearly guided by
en route features. If ants were to reset their global coordinates
when using the landmarks, it would be plausible for local vectors to be
encoded in the global coordinates that monitor the ant's position with respect
to the nest. But an absence of resetting in the present study would suggest
that when an ant monitors its progress along a route segment, it uses a
coordinate system distinct from the global coordinates.
In the Discussion we present a model describing how a secondary coordinate system could allow individuals to use PI information to produce straight trajectories along both novel paths and familiar routes. This model proposes how the lengths of habitual route segments may be learnt in order to form local vector memories.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
|---|
|
|
|---|
|
The exit point of the nest enclosure led into a small tray with doors at each end that could be closed to trap an ant briefly. During some tests we manipulated the global PI state that the ant had when it reached the end of the barrier. Once the ant was inside the tray, the doors were closed and the tray with the ant inside was picked up and displaced 4 m along the barrier. The ant was then released to travel the remaining 6 m along the barrier on its own. Training occurred between 08:00 h and 18:00 h for 2 weeks with occasional brief interludes of testing. To minimize any possible learning during such tests, an individual experienced test conditions for no more than one trip per day. In Fig. 2, the ants were not tested more than once in each condition.
|
| RESULTS |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Route memories
In order to examine whether ants could follow their habitual route even if
they had a reduced amount of PI before reaching the end of the barrier, we
carried ants over the first 4 m of their route. The ants were then released to
walk the remaining 6 m along the barrier before turning onto open ground for
the second leg of the route to the feeder. To reduce the visual cues at the
feeder during tests, we temporarily removed the feeder landmark leaving only
the feeder – a very slightly elevated (1 cm) plate. The mean initial
direction of the food-ward trajectories of ants that walked the entire 10 m
length of the barrier (Fig. 2A)
was 13±23 deg. (N=25), while the mean for ants carried 4 m
(Fig. 2B) was 11±13 deg.
(N=33). These directions were indistinguishable from each other
(Watson–Williams F-test: P>0.5, F=0.311).
The directions of the food-ward trajectories were therefore guided by memories
from along the route.
Although we can be confident that the ants are recognizing and using
landmarks or panoramas for guidance along their route, it is not possible to
determine the nature of the memories in the present case. Previous results
would suggest that the ants formed a local vector memory using compass cues
(e.g. Collett et al., 1998
;
Knaden et al., 2006
;
Collett and Collett, 2009
). But
because the 6 cm high barrier in the present experiment provides a visual cue
over the open ground, during tests as well as in training, it could
potentially provide snapshot-based cues about position or direction
(Collett and Collett,
2009
).
Does the global coordinate system re-align with familiar landmarks?
One potential memory that might be associated with the end of the barrier
is a habitual global PI coordinate. If the global coordinate system were
realigned with such a global coordinate memory, it would then be possible for
the ants to use global PI to produce trajectories that were independent of the
actual distance walked along the barrier. But signs of such resetting would be
identifiable: the global PI coordinates of ants reaching the feeder after
being carried the first 4 m along the barrier should then not reflect the
shorter distance walked, but would be the same as those of ants walking the
habitual 10 m along the barrier. To test for this possibility, we collected
each ant at the feeder after recording its trajectory from the barrier, and
recorded its home vector when it was released on a distant test field
(Fig. 2).
The end of the home vector indicates the approximate position of the origin
of the global PI coordinate system (Wehner
and Srinivasan, 1981
), thereby revealing the ant's global
coordinates at the point of capture, and thus whether its global coordinates
have been reset. The directions of the homeward trajectories show the
well-known systematic error (Müller
and Wehner, 1988
), making a more acute angle relative to the line
from feeder to barrier than is geometrically correct. In many of the ants,
there is also a puzzling initial segment roughly in the feeder to
end-of-barrier direction. But, critically, unlike the food-ward trajectories,
the home vectors from the two manipulations differ significantly. Ants carried
4 m along the barrier have shortened home vectors and the direction of their
trajectories is shifted towards the perpendicular from the feeder to the
barrier (directions to endpoints, Watson–Williams F-test:
P<0.000001, F=32, d.f.=1,53). Thus, even though the ants
do recognize and use remembered features along their route for guidance to the
feeder, they do not reset their global PI coordinates to any habitual
state.
| DISCUSSION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
PI output coordinates as a basis for local coordinates
Desert ants can learn the direction
(Collett et al., 1998
;
Collett and Collett, 2009
) and
distance (Knaden et al., 2006
;
Collett and Collett, 2009
) of a
segment of a habitual route. There is good theoretical reason to believe that
local vector memories of such segments would not be encoded as a difference
between global coordinates (Fig.
3A). The scatter generally observed in home vectors
(Sommer and Wehner, 2004
;
Ziegler and Wehner, 1997
)
implies considerable noise in the PI system. The scatter scales with the
distance travelled. As a consequence, the greater the length of the route
before a segment, the more inaccurate a local vector encoded in such a way
would be. Moreover, shorter local vectors would be particularly inaccurate.
Observations, however, suggest that accuracy along a local vector scales with
the length of the local vector (Cheng et
al., 1999
; Srinivasan et al.,
1997
). The lack of resetting found here, and in earlier studies
(Andel and Wehner, 2003
;
Collett et al., 1998
;
Collett et al., 2003
;
Knaden and Wehner, 2005
),
provides the evidence for a second line of argument that when an ant monitors
its progress along a local vector, it must do so in a local coordinate system
that is distinct from the global coordinates. A third piece of evidence comes
from a recent study with honeybees, which suggests that local and global
coordinates may use separate integrators
(Dacke and Srinivasan, 2008
).
How might the local and global coordinate systems be related?
|
A Cataglyphis forager can use its global coordinates to compensate
after an unfamiliar detour to redirect itself towards its nest
(Schmidt et al., 1992
) or
towards a remembered food location (Collett
et al., 1999
). To set the new course, it must compare its current
coordinates with the coordinates of its goal
(Collett and Collett, 2000
;
Collett et al., 1999
). The
comparison is likely to use an `inverse model' to generate the appropriate
trajectory to reach the goal (Kawato,
1999
). The resultant of the comparison can be thought of as a `PI
output vector'. One possibility is that, as the goal is approached,
there is a sequence of diminishing PI output vectors, with a zero output
vector at the goal. These output vectors would become increasingly inaccurate
as the goal is approached, and noise in the comparison process could result in
a change in direction at every comparison
(Fig. 3A). Such successive
comparisons could account for the frequent changes in direction observed
during search. But they would produce neither the straight home vectors
generally observed nor the sudden transitions to search that occur at the
`abknicht point' (Wehner and Srinivasan,
1981
).
|
Generally, desert ants and honeybees do search at appropriate distances
when guided by PI (Riley et al.,
2005
). To determine when the endpoint has been reached and the
directional command should be relinquished, a `termination comparison' would
also be required. We propose that, at the same time as the guidance command is
produced, an output vector coordinate system is initiated. This output
coordinate system would be centred at the location where the initiation
comparison is made, and the resultant of the comparison would provide the goal
state for the output coordinates (Fig.
3B). An ant would then monitor its progress in an output
coordinate system, in addition to monitoring the global coordinates. The
updating of position within the two coordinate frames could involve two
separate integrators, as may possibly be the case for honeybees
(Dacke and Srinivasan, 2008
),
or they could share a single integrator
(Fig. 4). A termination
comparison would provide a stop signal to the output command once the output
coordinates have reached the output goal. An output coordinate system would
provide distance information with respect to the point at which it is
initiated – exactly the distance information that would be required for
a local vector initiated at the same point.
The distance information in a local vector memory would not be involved in setting the direction of travel, but only in providing a termination signal to the directional command. It could be learnt from the output coordinates in at least two ways. An ant could learn the normal range of output coordinates experienced along the segment. It would then follow the local vector directional command as long as its current output coordinates fall within those familiar bounds. Alternatively, distance could be encoded as a goal state, learnt from the output coordinates at which new actions are initiated. In this case, an ant would terminate the local vector directional command if the command differs greatly from the resultant between its local vector goal and its current output coordinates. For either scheme, an ant would not have to follow the guidance cues from the output vector in order to use the output coordinates to monitor the distance travelled along a local vector.
An ant is likely to learn the direction of a local vector from some kind of
average of the compass directions it experiences whilst travelling within a
panorama-defined segment (Collett and
Collett, 2009
). We have suggested here that it could learn the
length of any local vector that starts where a PI output vector is regularly
produced. Since output vectors would generally be produced at locations where
there would be a distinct change in panoramic context, such as at the end of a
detour, changes in context along a route would generally be reliable triggers
of a learnt local vector (Collett et al.,
2002
).
Navigational implications of multiple coordinate systems
The use of a separate coordinate system for the metric route memories
leaves the global coordinate system uncorrupted by the misidentification of a
landscape feature. The independence from landscape features means that while
the global PI coordinate system allows insects to navigate from novel sites
and across unfamiliar terrain, it does not support general way finding between
landmarks (e.g. Gould, 1986
).
This limitation contrasts with the situation in mammals, which can use
landmark information to up-date PI coordinates
(Etienne et al., 2004
;
Hartley et al., 2003
;
O'Keefe and Nadel, 1978
). The
richness of desert ant navigation seems to be derived from multiple,
relatively simple and modular systems
(Collett and Collett, 2006
).
The ensemble of vector- and snapshot-based navigational strategies gives ants
a robust navigational system that can exploit the benefits of familiar
features while being resilient to errors of mis-recognition.
| References |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Andel, D. M. and Wehner, R. (2003). Path integration in desert ants, Cataglyphis: redirecting global vectors. In Proceedings of the 29th Göttingen Neurobiology Conference 2003 (ed. N. Elsner). Stuttgart: Thieme Verlag.
Cartwright, B. A. and Collett, T. S. (1987). Landmark maps for honeybees. Biol. Cybern. 57, 85-93.[CrossRef]
Cheng, K., Srinivasan, M. V. and Zhang, S. W. (1999). Error is proportional to distance measured by honeybees: Weber's law in the odometer. Anim. Cogn. 2, 11-16.[Medline]
Collett, M. and Collett, T. S. (2000). How do insects use path integration for their navigation? Biol. Cybern. 83,245 -259.[CrossRef][Medline]
Collett, M. and Collett, T. S. (2006). Insect navigation: no map at the end of the trail? Curr. Biol. 16,48 -51.[CrossRef]
Collett, M. and Collett, T. S. (2009). The
learning and maintenance of local vectors in desert ant navigation.
J. Exp. Biol. 212,895
-900.
Collett, M., Collett, T. S., Bisch, S. and Wehner, R. (1998). Local and global vectors in desert ant navigation. Nature 394,269 -272.[CrossRef]
Collett, M., Collett, T. S. and Wehner, R. (1999). Calibration of vector navigation in desert ants. Curr. Biol. 9,1031 -1034.[CrossRef][Medline]
Collett, M., Harland, D. and Collett, T. S.
(2002). The use of landmarks and panoramic context in the
performance of local vectors by navigating honeybees. J. Exp.
Biol. 205,807
-814.
Collett, M., Collett, T. S., Chameron, S. and Wehner, R.
(2003). Do familiar landmarks reset the global path integration
system of desert ants? J. Exp. Biol.
206,877
-882.
Collett, M., Collett, T. S. and Srinivasan, M. V. (2006). Insect navigation: measuring travel distance across ground and through air. Curr. Biol. 16,R887 -R890.[CrossRef][Medline]
Collett, T. S., Baron, J. and Sellen, K. (1996). On the encoding of movement vectors by honeybees: are distance and direction represented independently? J. Comp. Physiol. A 179,395 -406.
Dacke, M. and Srinivasan, M. V. (2008). Two
odometers in honeybees? J. Exp. Biol.
211,3281
-3286.
Etienne, A. S., Maurer, R., Boulens, V., Levy, A. and Rowe,
T. (2004). Resetting the path integrator: a basic condition
for route-based navigation. J. Exp. Biol.
207,1491
-1508.
Gould, J. L. (1986). The locale map of honey
bees: do insects have cognitive maps? Science
232,861
-863.
Hartley, T., Maguire, E. A., Spiers, H. J. and Burgess, N. (2003). The well-worn route and the path less traveled: distinct neural bases of route following and wayfinding in humans. Neuron 37,877 -888.[CrossRef][Medline]
Knaden, M. and Wehner, R. (2005). Nest mark orientation in desert ants Cataglyphis: what does it do to the path integrator? Anim. Behav. 70,1349 -1354.[CrossRef]
Kawato, K. (1999). Inverse models for motor control and trajectory planning. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 9,718 -727.[CrossRef][Medline]
Knaden, M., Lange, C. and Wehner, R. (2006). The importance of procedural knowledge in desert-ant navigation. Curr. Biol. 16,R916 -R917.[CrossRef][Medline]
Mittelstaedt, H. (1983). The role of multimodal convergence in homing by path integration. Fortschr. Zool. 28,197 -212.
Müller, M. and Wehner, R. (1988). Path
Integration in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis. Proc. Natl. Acad.
Sci. USA 85,5287
-5290.
O'Keefe, J. and Nadel, L. (1978). The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Riley, J. R., Greggers, U., Smith, A. D., Reynolds, D. R. and Menzel, R. (2005). The flight paths of honeybees recruited by the waggle dance. Nature 435,205 -207.[CrossRef][Medline]
Ronacher, B., Gallizzi, K., Wohlgemuth, S. and Wehner, R. (2000). Lateral optic flow does not influence distance estimation in the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis. J. Exp. Biol. 203,1113 -1121.[Abstract]
Santschi, F. (1913). Comment s'orientent les fourmis. Rev. Suisse Zool. 21,347 -425.
Schmidt, I., Collett, T. S., Dillier, F. X. and Wehner, R. (1992). How desert ants cope with enforced detours on their way home. J. Comp. Physiol. A 171,285 -288.
Sommer, S. and Wehner, R. (2004). The ant's estimation of distance travelled: experiments with desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis. J. Comp. Physiol. A 190, 1-6.[CrossRef][Medline]
Srinivasan, M. V., Zhang, S. W. and Bidwell, N. J. (1997). Visually mediated odometry in honeybees en route to the goal: visual flight control and odometry. J. Exp. Biol. 200,2513 -2522.[Abstract]
von Frisch, K. (1967). The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees. London: Oxford University Press.
Wehner, R. and Rossel, S. (1985). The bees' celestial compass-a case-study in behavioral neurobiology. Fortschr. Zool. 31,11 -53.
Wehner, R. and Srinivasan, M. V. (1981). Searching behavior of desert ants, genus Cataglyphis (Formicidae, Hymenoptera). J. Comp. Physiol. 142,315 -338.[CrossRef]
Wehner, R. and Srinivasan, M. V. (2003). Path integration in insects. In The Neurobiology of Spatial Behaviour (ed. K. J. Jeffery), pp. 9-30. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wehner, R., Harkness, R. D. and Schmid-Hempel, P. (1983). Foraging strategies in individually searching ants, Cataglyphis bicolor (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). In Information Processing in Animals (ed. M. Lindauer), pp. 1-79. Stuttgart: Fischer.
Wittlinger, M., Wehner, R. and Wolf, H. (2006).
The ant odometer: stepping on stilts and stumps.
Science 312,1965
-1967.
Ziegler, P. E. and Wehner, R. (1997). Time-courses of memory decay in vector-based and landmark-based systems of navigation in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis. J. Comp. Physiol. A 181,13 -20.[CrossRef]
![]()
CiteULike
Complore
Connotea
Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Technorati
Twitter What's this?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||