title: Polarised skylight and the landmark panorama provide night-active bull ants with compass information during route following.
abstract: Navigating animals are known to use a number of celestial and terrestrial compass cues that allow them to determine and control their direction of travel. Which of the cues dominate appears to depend on their salience. Here we show that night-active bull ants attend to both the pattern of polarised skylight and the landmark panorama in their familiar habitat. When the two directional cues are in conflict, ants choose a compromise direction. However, landmark guidance appears to be the primary mechanism of navigation used by forager ants, with those cues in the direction of heading having the greatest influence on navigation. Different colonies respond to the removal of these cues to different degrees, depending on the directional information provided by the local landmark panorama. Interestingly, other parts of the surrounding panorama also influence foraging speed and accuracy, suggesting that they too play a role in navigation.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, and Centre for Visual Sciences, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, PO Box 475, Sullivans Creek Road, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. samuel.reid@anu.edu.au
authors.forename: Samuel F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Reid
authors.forename: Ajay
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Narendra
authors.forename: Jan M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hemmi
authors.forename: Jochen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zeil
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005502:Food; D006702:Homing Behavior; D008027:Light; D009949:Orientation; D010781:Photography; D017440:Photoperiod; D016082:Solar System; D013028:Space Perception