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

Data for paper published on bioRxiv Feb 2021 (Pre-print)

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.

For details please see the README.txt file and view
the experiment methods in the paper.

Abstract:
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.