Abstract
Animals travelling through the world receive input from multiple sensory modalities that could be important for the guidance of their journeys. Given the availability of a rich array of cues, from idiothetic information to input from sky compasses and visual information through to olfactory and other cues (e.g. gustatory, magnetic, anemotactic or thermal) it is no surprise to see multimodality in most aspects of navigation. In this review, we present the current knowledge of multimodal cue use during orientation and navigation in insects. Multimodal cue use is adapted to a species’ sensory ecology and shapes navigation behaviour both during the learning of environmental cues and when performing complex foraging journeys. The simultaneous use of multiple cues is beneficial because it provides redundant navigational information, and in general, multimodality increases robustness, accuracy and overall foraging success. We use examples from sensorimotor behaviours in mosquitoes and flies as well as from large scale navigation in ants, bees and insects that migrate seasonally over large distances, asking at each stage how multiple cues are combined behaviourally and what insects gain from using different modalities.
Highlights
The world provides a host of information sources for an animal to use in controlling its behaviour, and we see in the navigation of insects the use of a variety of sensory inputs from multiple sensory modalities
The purpose of this review is to present the current knowledge of multimodal interactions during navigation in insects
We have these interesting examples of how path integration (PI) and visual guidance influence the behaviour of navigating ants, but we can ask about the role of olfaction in individually navigating ants and how odour use interacts with other navigational strategies
Summary
The world provides a host of information sources for an animal to use in controlling its behaviour, and we see in the navigation of insects the use of a variety of sensory inputs from multiple sensory modalities. Familiar visual scenes may be experienced that allow the ants to set an accurate direction for the route once they reacquire the food and resume their journey, albeit with their heading being controlled by celestial compass information, not the familiar visual scene, whilst moving backwards (Schwarz et al 2017a) We have these interesting examples of how PI and visual guidance influence the behaviour of navigating ants, but we can ask about the role of olfaction in individually navigating ants and how odour use interacts with other navigational strategies. This cue binding can be shown to be dynamic and depends both on the navigational context and the specific information provided by each modality (Buehlmann et al 2020)
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