Navigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.

Insects face the challenge of navigating to specific goals in both bright sun-lit and dim-lit environments. Both diurnal and nocturnal insects use quite similar navigation strategies. This is despite the signal-to-noise ratio of the navigational cues being poor at low light conditions. To better und...

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Autores principales:	Ajay Narendra, Samuel F Reid, Chloé A Raderschall
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2013
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/00f8905273d14292a9b1a4bc1287842d
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:00f8905273d14292a9b1a4bc1287842d2021-11-18T07:54:31ZNavigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0058801https://doaj.org/article/00f8905273d14292a9b1a4bc1287842d2013-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/23484052/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Insects face the challenge of navigating to specific goals in both bright sun-lit and dim-lit environments. Both diurnal and nocturnal insects use quite similar navigation strategies. This is despite the signal-to-noise ratio of the navigational cues being poor at low light conditions. To better understand the evolution of nocturnal life, we investigated the navigational efficiency of a nocturnal ant, Myrmecia pyriformis, at different light levels. Workers of M. pyriformis leave the nest individually in a narrow light-window in the evening twilight to forage on nest-specific Eucalyptus trees. The majority of foragers return to the nest in the morning twilight, while few attempt to return to the nest throughout the night. We found that as light levels dropped, ants paused for longer, walked more slowly, the success in finding the nest reduced and their paths became less straight. We found that in both bright and dark conditions ants relied predominantly on visual landmark information for navigation and that landmark guidance became less reliable at low light conditions. It is perhaps due to the poor navigational efficiency at low light levels that the majority of foragers restrict navigational tasks to the twilight periods, where sufficient navigational information is still available.Ajay NarendraSamuel F ReidChloé A RaderschallPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 8, Iss 3, p e58801 (2013)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Ajay Narendra Samuel F Reid Chloé A Raderschall Navigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.
description	Insects face the challenge of navigating to specific goals in both bright sun-lit and dim-lit environments. Both diurnal and nocturnal insects use quite similar navigation strategies. This is despite the signal-to-noise ratio of the navigational cues being poor at low light conditions. To better understand the evolution of nocturnal life, we investigated the navigational efficiency of a nocturnal ant, Myrmecia pyriformis, at different light levels. Workers of M. pyriformis leave the nest individually in a narrow light-window in the evening twilight to forage on nest-specific Eucalyptus trees. The majority of foragers return to the nest in the morning twilight, while few attempt to return to the nest throughout the night. We found that as light levels dropped, ants paused for longer, walked more slowly, the success in finding the nest reduced and their paths became less straight. We found that in both bright and dark conditions ants relied predominantly on visual landmark information for navigation and that landmark guidance became less reliable at low light conditions. It is perhaps due to the poor navigational efficiency at low light levels that the majority of foragers restrict navigational tasks to the twilight periods, where sufficient navigational information is still available.
format	article
author	Ajay Narendra Samuel F Reid Chloé A Raderschall
author_facet	Ajay Narendra Samuel F Reid Chloé A Raderschall
author_sort	Ajay Narendra
title	Navigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.
title_short	Navigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.
title_full	Navigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.
title_fullStr	Navigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.
title_full_unstemmed	Navigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.
title_sort	navigational efficiency of nocturnal myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2013
url	https://doaj.org/article/00f8905273d14292a9b1a4bc1287842d
work_keys_str_mv	AT ajaynarendra navigationalefficiencyofnocturnalmyrmeciaantssuffersatlowlightlevels AT samuelfreid navigationalefficiencyofnocturnalmyrmeciaantssuffersatlowlightlevels AT chloearaderschall navigationalefficiencyofnocturnalmyrmeciaantssuffersatlowlightlevels
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Navigational efficiency of nocturnal Myrmecia ants suffers at low light levels.

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