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Not using the obvious: desert ants, Melophorus bagoti, learn local vectors but not beacons in an arena

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Abstract

Many ant species travel large distances to find food, sometimes covering distances that are up to one million times their body length. Even when these foraging trips follow convoluted paths, the ants usually find their way back to their nest with precision (Wehner et al. in J Exp Biol 199:129–140, 1996). Ants have been shown to use both compass cues in the sky (pattern of polarised light) and landmarks on Earth to return to their nest. We present two experiments conducted on a solitary foraging ant: Melophorus bagoti in their natural habitat in the central Australian desert. Ants were trained and tested in situ. We tested foragers’ ability to exit a circular arena which provided an undifferentiated panorama. Artificial visual landmarks were located near a small exit. On tests in which path integration information was not available, foragers did not use artificial landmarks as beacons. Instead, they oriented in the learned exit direction, whether or not it pointed to the nest. We suggest that M. bagoti foragers learned a context-specific local vector when cued by the context of the circular arena. Our findings present the first evidence that M. bagoti foragers learn context-specific compass directions to chart their initial path home.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada discovery grant to MLS and an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant to KC (DP0770300). We would like to thank the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Centre for Arid Zone Research, for allowing us to conduct field studies on their property. We would also like to thank the entire research team at the Alice Springs field station for their help with this project, especially Paul Graham, Antoine Wystrach, Sebastian Schwarz, and Patrick Schultheiss for their invaluable discussions and knowledge. We also thank Dawson Clary and the three anonymous reviewers for their clear and insightful comments that have greatly improved this manuscript. At the time they were conducted, these studies fully complied with the laws of Australia where they were performed.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest with the organizations that sponsored this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, BSP 217, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E9, Canada

    Eric L. G. Legge & Marcia L. Spetch

  2. Department of Brain, Behaviour and Evolution, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Ken Cheng

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  1. Eric L. G. Legge
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  2. Marcia L. Spetch
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  3. Ken Cheng
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Correspondence to Eric L. G. Legge.

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Legge, E.L.G., Spetch, M.L. & Cheng, K. Not using the obvious: desert ants, Melophorus bagoti, learn local vectors but not beacons in an arena. Anim Cogn 13, 849–860 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-010-0333-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-010-0333-x

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