Dung Beetles Ignore Landmarks for Straight-line Orientation

Overview

Journal J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol

Publisher Springer

Specialties Neurology
Social Sciences

Date 2012 Oct 19

PMID 23076443

Citations 11

Authors

Marie Dacke

Marcus Byrne

Jochen Smolka

Eric Warrant

Emily Baird

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Upon locating a suitable dung pile, ball-rolling dung beetles shape a piece of dung into a ball and roll it away in a straight line. This guarantees that they will not return to the dung pile, where they risk having their ball stolen by other beetles. Dung beetles are known to use celestial compass cues such as the sun, the moon and the pattern of polarised light formed around these light sources to roll their balls of dung along straight paths. Here, we investigate whether terrestrial landmarks have any influence on straight-line orientation in dung beetles. We find that the removal or re-arrangement of landmarks has no effect on the beetle's orientation precision. Celestial compass cues dominate straight-line orientation in dung beetles so strongly that, under heavily overcast conditions or when prevented from seeing the sky, the beetles can no longer orient along straight paths. To our knowledge, this is the only animal with a visual compass system that ignores the extra orientation precision that landmarks can offer.

Citing Articles

Mechanisms of spectral orientation in a diurnal dung beetle.

Yilmaz A, El Jundi B, Belusic G, Byrne M, Baird E, Dacke M Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2022; 377(1862):20210287.

PMID: 36058237 PMC: 9441229. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0287.

The interplay of directional information provided by unpolarised and polarised light in the heading direction network of the diurnal dung beetle Kheper lamarcki.

Khaldy L, J Foster J, Yilmaz A, Belusic G, Gagnon Y, Tocco C J Exp Biol. 2022; 225(3).

PMID: 35037692 PMC: 8918814. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.243734.

Not just going with the flow: foraging ants attend to polarised light even while on the pheromone trail.

Freas C, Plowes N, Spetch M J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2019; 205(5):755-767.

PMID: 31422422 DOI: 10.1007/s00359-019-01363-z.

The effect of step size on straight-line orientation.

Khaldy L, Peleg O, Tocco C, Mahadevan L, Byrne M, Dacke M J R Soc Interface. 2019; 16(157):20190181.

PMID: 31387484 PMC: 6731515. DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2019.0181.

Multimodal cue integration in the dung beetle compass.

Dacke M, Bell A, J Foster J, Baird E, Strube-Bloss M, Byrne M Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019; 116(28):14248-14253.

PMID: 31235569 PMC: 6628800. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1904308116.

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