Journal
INSECTES SOCIAUX
Volume 69, Issue 2-3, Pages 271-277Publisher
SPRINGER BASEL AG
DOI: 10.1007/s00040-022-00867-3
Keywords
Visual orientation; Innate behavior; Navigation; Foraging ecology; Wood ants; Formica rufa
Categories
Funding
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/R005036/1]
- Leverhulme Trust [RPG-2019-232]
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This study investigated the impact of different motivational states on the innate visual response of wood ant foragers. The results showed that regardless of the motivational state, wood ant foragers orient towards prominent visual cues, indicating a hardwired behavior that exists across different motivational and ecological contexts.
Ants are expert navigators combining innate and learnt navigational strategies. Whereas we know that the ants' feeding state segregates visual-navigational memories in ants navigating along a learnt route, it is an open question if the motivational state also affects the ants' innate visual preferences. Wood ant foragers show an innate attraction to conspicuous visual cues. These foragers inhabit cluttered woodland habitat and feed on honeydew from aphids on trees. Hence, the attraction to 'tree-like' objects might be an ecologically relevant behavior that is tailored to the wood ants' foraging ecology. Foragers from other ant species with different foraging ecologies show very different innate attractions. We investigated here the innate visual response of wood ant foragers with different motivational states, i.e., unfed or fed, as well as males that show no foraging activity. Our results show that ants from all three groups orient toward a prominent visual cue, i.e., this intrinsic visuomotor response is not context-dependent, but a hardwired behavior seen across different motivational and ecological contexts.
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