Desert ant (Cataglyphis fortis) on the nest mound
Markus Knaden, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology
A species of desert ant builds mounds in its flat Sahara desert habitat as navigational landmarks to help find its way home.
Desert ants are noted for their wayfinding abilities, and many travel long distances to gather food to bring back to the colony. But these foraging trips are a particularly difficult task for ants that: Cataglyphis fortisIt lives in the salt flats of Tunisia, so it must find the entrance to its thumbnail-sized underground nest without the help of landmarks such as plants, hills or bodies of water.
Markus Knaden of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany and his colleagues set out to investigate the purpose of man-made mounds. C.StrongAfter noticing the height difference. The hills near the nests near the shrub-covered ends of the salt pans were barely noticeable, but some in the center exceeded 25 centimeters in height, suggesting that the hills served some purpose. there is
Researchers first used GPS to track insect locations and found that insect mortality was high. About 20 percent of the ants on the longest trip, over two kilometers, never made it home and died in the scorching heat.
The researchers then tracked the ants in 16 nests. In some places they removed nearby mounds, in others the researchers left…
The area is completely lonely. Researchers found that removing nests increased the odds of ants not finding their way home by 250 to 400 percent. In nearly all cases, gatherer nestmates immediately began rebuilding lost structures.
When Knaden and his team replaced the mounds with artificial markers—black cylinders the size of large fire extinguishers—they found the ants wouldn’t rebuild. “It takes a lot of work to build a burrow like this. Hundreds of ants gather overnight,” says Kunaden. “So if I don’t have to, I don’t do it.” With the artificial landmarks, the ants took a more direct route home, just as they did before the mound was flattened. .
“Insect collectors are no strangers to discovering myriad ways to help them navigate efficiently with clever tricks,” says Paul Graham of the University of Sussex, UK. I was a little surprised,” he says.
The remaining mystery is how the colony keeps track of when it needs new landmarks. C.Strong Because there is a division of labor in the colony, older foraging ants may be telling younger ants in charge of construction that they need landmarks. Or it could be the actions of young ants who see old colony mates struggling to return.
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