A desert ant's memory of recent visual experience and the control of route guidance.

ABSTRACT: Insects such as desert ants learn stereotyped visual routes between their nests and reliable food sites. Studies here reveal an important control element for ensuring that the route memories are used appropriately. They find that visual route memories can be disengaged, so that they do not provide guidance, even when all appropriate visual cues are present and when there are no competing guidance cues. Ants were trained along a simple route dominated by a single isolated landmark. If returning ants were caught just before entering the nest and replaced at the feeder, then they often interrupted the recapitulation of their homeward route with a period of apparent confusion during which the route memories were ignored. A series of experiments showed that this confusion occurred in response t

SUBMITTER: Collett M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4071549 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature