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Information content of visual scenes influences systematic search of desert ants
- Source :
- The Journal of experimental biology. 216(Pt 4)
- Publication Year :
- 2012
-
Abstract
- Summary Many animals - including insects - navigate visually through their environment. Solitary foraging desert ants are known to acquire visual information from the surrounding panorama and use it to navigate along habitual routes or to pinpoint a goal like the nest. Returning foragers that fail to find the nest entrance engage in searching behaviour, during which they continue to use vision. The characteristics of searching behaviour have typically been investigated in unfamiliar environments. Here we investigated in detail the nest searching behaviour of Melophorus bagoti foragers within the familiar visual environment of their nest. First, by relating search behaviour to the information content of panoramic (360°) images, we found that searches were more accurate in visually cluttered environments. Second, as observed in unfamiliar visual surrounds, searches were dynamic and gradually expanded with time, showing that nest-pinpointing is not rigidly controlled by vision. Third, contrary to searches displayed in unfamiliar environments, searches observed here could be modelled as a single exponential search strategy, which is similar to a Brownian walk, and there was no evidence of a Lévy walk. Overall, our results revealed that searching behaviour is remarkably flexible and varies according to the relevance of information provided by the surrounding visual scenery.
- Subjects :
- Panorama
Physiology
Computer science
Movement
Foraging
Aquatic Science
Nesting Behavior
Nest
Human–computer interaction
Animals
Relevance (information retrieval)
Molecular Biology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Vision, Ocular
Communication
biology
business.industry
Ants
Desert (particle physics)
Melophorus bagoti
biology.organism_classification
Exponential search
Insect Science
Animal Science and Zoology
Desert Climate
business
Systematic search
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14779145
- Volume :
- 216
- Issue :
- Pt 4
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The Journal of experimental biology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....30c203c1ef0fe99661c3f61aa62ee8b4