Vector-based Navigation in Desert Ants: the Significance of Path-integration Vectors

In the longstanding discussion of whether insects, especially central place foragers such as bees and ants, use metric representations of their landmark surroundings (so-called "cognitive maps"), the ability to find novel shortcuts between familiar locations has been considered one of the most decisive proofs for the use of such maps. Here we show by channel-based field experiments that desert ants Cataglyphis can travel such shortcuts between locations (defined by memorized goal vectors) just on the basis of path integration. When trained to visit two spatially separated feeders A and B they later travel the hitherto novel route A→B. This behavior may originate from the interaction of goal vectors retrieved from long-term memory and the current vector computed by the continuously running path integrator. Based on former experiments, we further argue that path integration is a necessary requirement also for acquiring landmark information (in form of learned goal-directed views). This emphasizes the paramount importance of path integration in these central place foragers. Finally we hypothesize that the ant's overall system of navigation consists in the optimal combination of path-integration vectors and view-based vectors, and thus handles and uses vectorial information without the need of constructing a "vector map", in which vectors are linked to known places in the environment others than to the origin of all journeys, the nest.