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Traveling through light clutter: Path integration and panorama guided navigation in the Sonoran Desert ant, Novomessor cockerelli

Foraging ants use multiple navigational strategies, including path integration and visual panorama cues, which are used simultaneously and weighted based upon context, the environment and the species’ sensory ecology. In particular, the amount of visual clutter in the habitat predicts the weighting given to the forager’s path integrator and surrounding panorama cues. Here, we characterize the individual cue use and cue weighting of the Sonoran Desert ant, Novomessor cockerelli, by testing foragers after local and distant displacement. Foragers attend to both a path-integration-based vector and the surrounding panorama to navigate, on and off foraging routes. When both cues were present, foragers initially oriented to their path integrator alone, yet weighting was dynamic, with foragers abandoning the vector and switching to panorama-based navigation after a few meters. If displaced to unfamiliar locations, experienced foragers travelled almost their full homeward vector (~85%) before the onset of search. Through panorama analysis, we show views acquired on-route provide sufficient information for orientation over only short distances, with rapid parallel decreases in panorama similarity and navigational performance after even small local displacements. These findings are consistent with heavy path integrator weighting over the panorama when the local habitat contains few prominent terrestrial cues.