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Large-Scale Navigation: The Insect Case

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Spatial Information Theory. Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information Science (COSIT 1999)

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Abstract

Despite their miniature, 0.1-mg brains Cataglyphis ants of the Sahara desert are particularly impressive navigators. They leave their subterranean burrows for distances of several hundred metres by winding their way in a tortuous search for food, and then return in an amazingly straight line to the starting point of their foraging trip. Their predominant way of navigation is path integration including a compass that is based on skylight (polarization) patterns invisible to man. Path integration is supplemented by landmark guidance for finally pin-pointing the goal. In this context, matching of retinotopically fixed panoramic views (“snapshots”) and local vectors accompanying such views are further components of the ant’s navigational toolkit. Behavioural and neurobiological analyses reveal that in the insect’s cockpit - its brain - a high-level task is accomplished by the collective interaction of a number of low-level modules.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zoologisches Institut der Universität Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057, Zürich, Switzerland

    Rüdiger Wehner

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  1. Rüdiger Wehner
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universität Hamburg, Fachbereich Informatik, Vogt-Kölln-Straße 30, D-22527, Hamburg, Germany

    Christian Freksa

  2. Department of Geography, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, 14261, USA

    David M. Mark

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Wehner, R. (1999). Large-Scale Navigation: The Insect Case. In: Freksa, C., Mark, D.M. (eds) Spatial Information Theory. Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information Science. COSIT 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1661. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48384-5_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48384-5_1

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