Multiroute memories in desert ants

When offered a permanent food source, central Australian desert ants, Melophorus bagoti, develop individually distinct, view-based foraging routes, which they retrace with amazing accuracy during each foraging trip. Using a particular channel setup connected to an artificial feeder, we trained M. ba...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2008-01, Vol.105 (1), p.317-322
Main Authors: Sommer, Stefan, von Beeren, Christoph, Wehner, Rüdiger
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal cognition
Animal memory
Animals
Ants
Ants - physiology
Behavior, Animal
Biological Sciences
Cooperative Behavior
Cues
Desert Climate
Desert insects
Entomology
Environment
Exploratory Behavior
Food
Foraging
Formicidae
Homing Behavior
Insect behavior
Insect nests
Insect vectors
Insects
Landmarks
Memory
Research Design
Space Perception
Spatial Behavior
Training
Trajectories
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Summary:When offered a permanent food source, central Australian desert ants, Melophorus bagoti, develop individually distinct, view-based foraging routes, which they retrace with amazing accuracy during each foraging trip. Using a particular channel setup connected to an artificial feeder, we trained M. bagoti ants to either two or three inward routes that led through different parts of their maze-like foraging grounds. Here, we show that ants are able to adopt multiple habitual paths in succession and that they preserve initially acquired route memories even after they have been trained to new routes. Individual ants differ in the consistency with which they run along habitual pathways. However, those ants that follow constant paths retain their route-specific memories for at least 5 days of suspended foraging, which suggests that even multiple route memories, once acquired, are preserved over the entire lifetime of a forager.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0710157104