Learning to forage: the learning walks of Australian jack jumper ants

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Learning to forage: the learning walks of Australian jack jumper ants Piyankarie Jayatilaka1*, Chloé Raderschall1, Jochen Zeil1 and Ajay Narendra1 1 The Australian National University, ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, The Research School of Biology, Australia The ‘jack jumper’ ants, Myrmecia croslandi travel as far as 15m from the nest to find food. Being solitary and highly visual foragers, these ants navigate remarkably well without the help of recruitment and pheromone trails, relying solely on their individual navigational abilities. However, any inexperienced, solitary forager leaving the nest for the first time needs to acquire these abilities. We individually marked all foragers of two nests of M. croslandi and tracked their movements around the nest with video and throughout their foraging journeys with Differential GPS. When inexperienced ants leave the nest for the first time, they perform ‘learning walks’ as have been previously described for desert and wood ants. These walks are different from other forager behaviours and can be clearly identified by the following characteristics. (1) Learning walks are short, round trips that occur in different directions within 1m of the nest. (2) A single ant may carry out several walks throughout the day before it leaves the nest to forage. (3) With time, the area around the nest covered by these learning walks increases. (4) During learning walks ants look around extensively but rarely look back at the nest. Here, I will discuss consistent patterns between learning view directions and the first foraging trip. I will show how individuals perform learning walks in specific directions around the nest, mostly in the initial foraging direction and in the opposite direction. I will also highlight how in some cases learning walks may be repeated by ants that (a) change initial foraging directions or (b) by ants that have had great difficulty in locating the nest on their previous trip. Figure 1 Keywords: Ants, navigation, foraging, learning walks, solitary Conference: International Conference on Invertebrate Vision, Fjälkinge, Sweden, 1 Aug - 8 Aug, 2013. Presentation Type: Poster presentation preferred Topic: Navigation and orientation Citation: Jayatilaka P, Raderschall C, Zeil J and Narendra A (2019). Learning to forage: the learning walks of Australian jack jumper ants. Front. Physiol. Conference Abstract: International Conference on Invertebrate Vision. doi: 10.3389/conf.fphys.2013.25.00081 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Apr 2013; Published Online: 09 Dec 2019. * Correspondence: Ms. Piyankarie Jayatilaka, The Australian National University, ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, The Research School of Biology, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia, piyankarie@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Piyankarie Jayatilaka Chloé Raderschall Jochen Zeil Ajay Narendra Google Piyankarie Jayatilaka Chloé Raderschall Jochen Zeil Ajay Narendra Google Scholar Piyankarie Jayatilaka Chloé Raderschall Jochen Zeil Ajay Narendra PubMed Piyankarie Jayatilaka Chloé Raderschall Jochen Zeil Ajay Narendra Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.