title: Route-segment odometry and its interactions with global path-integration.
abstract: Insects such as desert ants and honeybees use visual memories to travel along familiar routes between their nest and a food-site. We trained Cataglyphis fortis foragers along a two-segment route to investigate whether they encode the lengths of route segments over which visual cues remain approximately constant. Our results support earlier studies suggesting that such route-segment odometry exists, and allows an individual to stop using a visual route memory at an appropriate point, even in the absence of any change in the visual surroundings. But we find that the behavioural effects of route-segment odometry are often complicated by interactions with guidance from the global path-integration system. If route-segment odometry and path-integration agree, they act together to produce a precise signal for search. If the endpoint of route-segment odometry arrives first, it does not trigger search but its effect can persist and cause guidance by path-integration to end early. Conversely, if ants start with their path-integration state at zero, they follow a route memory for no more than 3 m, irrespective of the route-segment length. A possible explanation for these results is that if one guidance system is made to overshoot its endpoint, it can cause the other to be cut short.
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK, t.s.collett@sussex.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Thomas S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Collett
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Collett
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D003889:Desert Climate; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D006702:Homing Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D012903:Smell / Q000502:physiology*; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014416:Tunisia