The Ant Odometer: Stepping on Stilts and Stumps

by: Matthias Wittlinger, Rudiger Wehner, Harald Wolf

Science, Vol. 312, No. 5782. (30 June 2006), pp. 1965-1967.

View FullText article

DOI, HighWire

Reviews [Write a review of this article]

There are no reviews of this article

Find related articles from these CiteULike users

Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

ants, navigation, path-integration

Abstract

Desert ants, Cataglyphis, navigate in their vast desert habitat by path integration. They continuously integrate directions steered (as determined by their celestial compass) and distances traveled, gauged by as-yet-unknown mechanisms. Here we test the hypothesis that navigating ants measure distances traveled by using some kind of step integrator, or "step counter." We manipulated the lengths of the legs and, hence, the stride lengths, in freely walking ants. Animals with elongated ("stilts") or shortened legs ("stumps") take larger or shorter strides, respectively, and concomitantly misgauge travel distance. Travel distance is overestimated by experimental animals walking on stilts and underestimated by animals walking on stumps. 10.1126/science.1126912

@article{citeulike:717094, abstract = {Desert ants, Cataglyphis, navigate in their vast desert habitat by path integration. They continuously integrate directions steered (as determined by their celestial compass) and distances traveled, gauged by as-yet-unknown mechanisms. Here we test the hypothesis that navigating ants measure distances traveled by using some kind of step integrator, or "step counter." We manipulated the lengths of the legs and, hence, the stride lengths, in freely walking ants. Animals with elongated ("stilts") or shortened legs ("stumps") take larger or shorter strides, respectively, and concomitantly misgauge travel distance. Travel distance is overestimated by experimental animals walking on stilts and underestimated by animals walking on stumps. 10.1126/science.1126912}, author = {Wittlinger, Matthias and Wehner, Rudiger and Wolf, Harald }, citeulike-article-id = {717094}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1126912}, journal = {Science}, keywords = {ants, navigation, path-integration}, month = {June}, number = {5782}, pages = {1965--1967}, posted-at = {2006-06-30 09:28:14}, priority = {0}, title = {The Ant Odometer: Stepping on Stilts and Stumps}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1126912}, volume = {312}, year = {2006} }

RIS record

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:717094 L3 - citeulike-article-id:717094 N2 - Desert ants, Cataglyphis, navigate in their vast desert habitat by path integration. They continuously integrate directions steered (as determined by their celestial compass) and distances traveled, gauged by as-yet-unknown mechanisms. Here we test the hypothesis that navigating ants measure distances traveled by using some kind of step integrator, or "step counter." We manipulated the lengths of the legs and, hence, the stride lengths, in freely walking ants. Animals with elongated ("stilts") or shortened legs ("stumps") take larger or shorter strides, respectively, and concomitantly misgauge travel distance. Travel distance is overestimated by experimental animals walking on stilts and underestimated by animals walking on stumps. 10.1126/science.1126912 IS - 5782 JF - Science EP - 1967 TI - The Ant Odometer: Stepping on Stilts and Stumps VL - 312 SP - 1965 KW - ants KW - navigation KW - path-integration AU - Wittlinger, Matthias AU - Wehner, Rudiger AU - Wolf, Harald PY - 2006/06/30/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1126912 ER -

RIS BibTeX