Compensation to visual impairments and behavioral plasticity in navigating ants.

Autor:	Schwarz S; Centre de Biologie Integrative, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Centre de Biologie Intégrative, CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse 31062 cedex 09, France.; Department of Biology, Division of Zoology, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria., Clement L; Centre de Biologie Integrative, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Centre de Biologie Intégrative, CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse 31062 cedex 09, France., Haalck L; Centre de Biologie Integrative, Institute for Informatics, Computer Vision and Machine Learning Systems, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany., Risse B; Centre de Biologie Integrative, Institute for Informatics, Computer Vision and Machine Learning Systems, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany., Wystrach A; Centre de Biologie Integrative, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Centre de Biologie Intégrative, CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse 31062 cedex 09, France.
Jazyk:	angličtina
Zdroj:	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A] 2024 Nov 26; Vol. 121 (48), pp. e2410908121. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Nov 19.
DOI:	10.1073/pnas.2410908121
Abstrakt:	Desert ants are known to rely heavily on vision while venturing for food and returning to the nest. During these foraging trips, ants memorize and recognize their visual surroundings, which enables them to recapitulate individually learned routes in a fast and effective manner. The compound eyes are crucial for such visual navigation; however, it remains unclear how information from both eyes are integrated and how ants cope with visual impairment. Here, we manipulated the ants' visual system by covering one of the two compound eyes and analyzed their ability to recognize familiar views. Monocular ants showed an immediate disruption of their ability to recapitulate their familiar route. However, they were able to compensate for this nonnatural impairment in a few hours by engaging in an extensive route-relearning ontogeny, composed of more learning walks than what naïve ants typically do. This relearning process with one eye forms novel memories, without erasing the previous memories acquired with two eyes. Additionally, ants having learned a route with one eye only are unable to recognize it with two eyes, even though more information is available. Together, this shows that visual memories are encoded and recalled in an egocentric and fundamentally binocular way, where the visual input as a whole must be matched to enable recognition. We show how this kind of visual processing fits with their neural circuitry. Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.
Databáze:	MEDLINE
Externí odkaz:	Zobrazit plný text záznamu