Data for research article "Innate visual attraction in wood ants is a hardwired behaviour seen across different motivational and ecological contexts"

<b>Data for paper published on bioRxiv Feb 2021 (Pre-print)</b><b><br></b> Data contains paths from individually recorded ants during the experiments (saved as Matlab files). You will need access to the MATLAB environment to view these files.<br> For details please see the README.txt file and view the experiment methods in the paper.<br> <b>Abstract:</b>Ants are expert navigators combing innate and learnt navigational strategies. Whereas we know that the ants’ feeding state segregates visual navigational memories in ants navigating along a learnt route, it is an open question if the motivational state also affects the ants’ innate visual preferences. Wood ant foragers show an innate attraction to conspicuous visual cues. These foragers inhabit cluttered woodland habitat and feed on honeydew from aphids on trees, hence, the attraction to ‘tree-like’ objects might be an ecologically relevant behaviour that is tailored to the wood ants’ foraging ecology. Foragers from other ant species with different foraging ecologies show very different innate attractions. We investigated here the innate visual response of wood ant foragers with different motivational states, i.e. unfed or fed, as well as males that have a short life span and show no foraging activity. Our results show that ants from all three groups orient towards a prominent visual cue, i.e. the wood ants’ innate visual attraction is not context dependent, but a hardwired behaviour seen across different motivational and ecological contexts.

<b>2021年2月发表于bioRxiv的预印本论文数据集</b><b><br></b>数据集包含实验中单独记录的蚂蚁路径（以Matlab文件格式存储）。您需要使用MATLAB环境才能查看这些文件。<br>详情请参见README.txt文件并查阅论文中的实验方法部分。<br><b>摘要：</b>蚂蚁是兼具先天与习得导航策略的专家级导航者。尽管我们已知蚂蚁的进食状态会在其沿习得路线导航时分离视觉导航记忆，但动机状态是否同样影响蚂蚁的先天视觉偏好仍是一个开放问题。木蚁觅食者对显著视觉线索具有先天吸引力。这些觅食者栖息于杂乱的林地环境，以树上蚜虫分泌的蜜露为食，因此对"类树"物体的吸引力可能是一种与其觅食生态相适应的生态相关行为。具有不同觅食生态的其他蚁种觅食者表现出截然不同的先天吸引力。本研究探讨了不同动机状态（即未进食或已进食）的木蚁觅食者以及寿命较短且无觅食活动的雄性木蚁的先天视觉反应。结果表明，所有三组蚂蚁均朝向显著视觉线索定向，即木蚁的先天视觉吸引力不依赖于环境，而是一种在不同动机与生态背景下均存在的硬连线行为。