Data for: Complementary landmarks facilitate ant navigation

We investigated the effect of presenting rock ant colonies (Temnothorax albipennis) with identical horizontal landmarks either side of their route, versus one horizontal landmark paired with a sloping landmark, as they navigated to a new nest site. Our findings suggest that ants can obtain more navigational information from a combination of dissimilar landmarks: the average tortuosity of the route taken between old and new nests was significantly lower when a horizontal landmark was paired with a monotonically downward sloping landmark (the paths were more direct). The impact on available navigational information from the similarity or dissimilarity of nearby landmarks is likely made through more distinctive visual panoramas, and could be an influential factor in individual and collective animal decision-making about which routes are followed.

本研究探究了石蚁群（Temnothorax albipennis）在向新巢址导航迁飞时的两种地标配置对其导航行为的影响：其一为在行进路线两侧放置完全相同的水平地标，其二为以单个水平地标搭配倾斜地标。研究结果表明，蚂蚁可从异类地标的组合中获取更丰富的导航信息：当水平地标与单调向下倾斜的地标配对时，新旧巢址间行进路径的平均曲折度显著更低（即路径更为直接）。周边地标间的相似性或相异性对可用导航信息的影响，大概率通过构建辨识度更高的视觉全景得以实现，该因素或可成为影响动物个体与集体决策行进路线的重要因子。