Cuesta arriba: integración de rutas en tres dimensiones por la hormiga arriera, Atta colombica

Abstract

Path integration is a navigation strategy widely used by many animals enabling them to return to their starting point, through the processing of angular and distance information. Although path integration is well established in the two-dimensional (2D) plane, it is still not well understood whether it extends to the third dimension (3D). This project investigated whether A. colombica can compute vectors in 3D by using different experiments in which the inclination and distance of different routes were modified. The results indicate that A. colombica is able of perceiving changes in the direction and inclination of its routes and incorporates the angular information to the path integrator with the corresponding distances to the ground; exhibiting better ability to do so in 3D settings. These results suggest a possible three-dimensional representation of their world, in addition to what could be a neural representation of space that is much more tolerant to the noise of information input and output processing.