The scent of mixtures: rules of odour processing in ants.
Natural odours are complex blends of numerous components. Understanding how animals perceive odour mixtures is central to multiple disciplines. Here we focused on carpenter ants, which rely on odours in various behavioural contexts. We studied overshadowing, a phenomenon that occurs when animals having learnt a binary mixture respond less to one component than to the other, and less than when this component was learnt alone. Ants were trained individually with alcohols and aldehydes varying in carbon-chain length, either as single odours or binary mixtures. They were then tested with the mixture and the components. Overshadowing resulted from the interaction between chain length and functional group: alcohols overshadowed aldehydes, and longer chain lengths overshadowed shorter ones; yet, combinations of these factors could cancel each other and suppress overshadowing. Our results show how ants treat binary olfactory mixtures and set the basis for predictive analyses of odour perception in insects.
1] Research Center on Animal Cognition; University of Toulouse; UPS; 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France [2] Research Center on Animal Cognition; CNRS; 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France [3] Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative Ethology, University Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Villetaneuse, France.
Margot
M
Perez
1] Research Center on Animal Cognition; University of Toulouse; UPS; 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France [2] Research Center on Animal Cognition; CNRS; 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France.
Martin
M
Giurfa
Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative Ethology, University Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Villetaneuse, France.
Patrizia
P
d'Ettorre
D000447:Aldehydes / Q000494:pharmacology; D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000502:physiology*; D008568:Memory; D009812:Odorants; D055696:Olfactory Perception / Q000502:physiology*
D000447:Aldehydes