Stefan Sommer

Traveling in clutter: Navigation in the Central Australian desert ant Melophorus bagoti

The Central Australian desert ant Melophorus bagoti is the most thermophilic ant on the continent. It comes out to forage during the hottest part of the day in the summer months. The ant shares a cluttered, plant-filled habitat with other arthropods and uses a range of navigational strategies. We review recent studies on this species concerning its use of habitual routes, distant landmarks, landmarks around the nest, and path integration, which is keeping track of the distance and direction traveled from ones starting point. Functional predictions concerning the acquisition, retention, and integration of memories of distances and of landmarks are also reviewed, illuminating the behavioral ecology of spatial cognition.

The ant's estimation of distance travelled: experiments with desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis.

Foraging desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, monitor their position relative to the nest by path integration. They continually update the direction and distance to the nest by employing a celestial compass and an odometer. In the present account we addressed the question of how the precision of the ant’s estimate of its homing distance depends on the distance travelled. We trained ants to forage at different distances in linear channels comprising a nest entrance and a feeder. For testing we caught ants at the feeder and released them in a parallel channel. The results show that ants tend to underestimate their distances travelled. This underestimation is the more pronounced, the larger the foraging distance gets. The quantitative relationship between training distance and the ant’s estimate of this distance can be described by a logarithmic and an exponential model. The ant’s odometric undershooting could be adaptive during natural foraging trips insofar as it leads the homing ant to concentrate the major part of its nest-search behaviour on the base of its individual foraging sector, i.e. on its familiar landmark corridor.

Foraging ecology of the thermophilic Australian desert ant, Melophorus bagoti

The paper describes the foraging ecology of the Australian desert ant, Melophorus bagoti, a thermophilic, diurnal scavenger with ground-nesting colonies. Overlapping foraging ranges, low foraging success rates, and intercolony aggression suggest intense competition for food between colonies. Daily foraging starts when soil surface temperatures approach 50°C. Workers search individually and collect predominantly dead insects. Occasionally, they consume plant secretions. Foraging activity peaks on mid-summer days. On cloudy days the onset of foraging is delayed, and the foraging activity is low. Ants do not forage on rainy days. Typically, workers start their above-ground activities with a few short exploration runs. On average, they perform one foraging run on the first day of their outdoor lives. With age they gradually increase foraging site fidelity and daily foraging effort. Individual foraging efficiency is low at the beginning but grows with experience. However, due to a high mortality rate and, hence, high forager turnover, average rates of foraging success for a colony remain rather low. The outdoor activity gradually decreases towards the end of summer and appears to stop completely during the winter months.

Multiroute memories in desert ants

When offered a permanent food source, central Australian desert ants, Melophorus bagoti, develop individually distinct, view-based foraging routes, which they retrace with amazing accuracy during each foraging trip. Using a particular channel setup connected to an artificial feeder, we trained M. bagoti ants to either two or three inward routes that led through different parts of their maze-like foraging grounds. Here, we show that ants are able to adopt multiple habitual paths in succession and that they preserve initially acquired route memories even after they have been trained to new routes. Individual ants differ in the consistency with which they run along habitual pathways. However, those ants that follow constant paths retain their route-specific memories for at least 5 days of suspended foraging, which suggests that even multiple route memories, once acquired, are preserved over the entire lifetime of a forager.

Vector navigation in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis: celestial compass cues are essential for the proper use of distance information

Foraging desert ants navigate primarily by path integration. They continually update homing direction and distance by employing a celestial compass and an odometer. Here we address the question of whether information about travel distance is correctly used in the absence of directional information. By using linear channels that were partly covered to exclude celestial compass cues, we were able to test the distance component of the path-integration process while suppressing the directional information. Our results suggest that the path integrator cannot process the distance information accumulated by the odometer while ants are deprived of celestial compass information. Hence, during path integration directional cues are a prerequisite for the proper use of travel-distance information by ants.

Quantitative genetic analysis of larval life history traits in two alpine populations of Rana temporaria.

We estimated genetic and maternal variance components of larval life history characters in alpine populations of Rana temporaria (the common frog) using a full-sib/half-sib breeding design. We studied trait plasticity by raising tadpoles at 14 or 20°C in the laboratory. Larval period and metamorphic mass were greater at 14°C. Larval period did not differ between populations, but high elevation metamorphs were larger than low elevation metamorphs. Significant additive variation for larval period was detected in the low altitude population. No significant additive variation was detected for mass at metamorphosis (MM), which instead displayed significant maternal effects. Plasticity in metamorphic mass of froglets was greater in the high altitude population. The plastic response of larval period to temperature did not differ between the populations. Evolution of metamorphic mass is likely constrained by lack of additive genetic variation. In contrast, significant heritability for larval period suggests this trait may evolve in response to environmental change. These results differ from other studies on R. temporaria, suggesting that populations of this broadly distributed species present substantial geographic variation in the genetic architecture and plasticity of tadpole life history traits.

Leg allometry in ants: Extreme long-leggedness in thermophilic species

The thermophilic ant genera Cataglyphis and Ocymyrmex share a variety of specialisations that enable them to engage in high-speed foraging at considerably higher temperatures than less heat-tolerant species. In the present account we test the hypothesis that thermophilic ants have longer legs than closely related species from more mesic habitats. By comparing large-sized, medium-sized, and small-sized species of Cataglyphis and Ocymyrmex with size-matched species of the closely related non-thermophilic genera Formica (Formicinae) and Messor (Myrmicinae), respectively, we show that the thermophilic species are equipped with considerably longer legs than their less heat-tolerant relatives. Hence phylogenetically, extreme long-leggedness has evolved at least twice in desert ants: in the Formicinae and the Myrmicinae. Functionally, this morphological trait is adaptive for a number of reasons. The long legs raise the body into cooler layers of air and enable higher running speeds, which increase convective cooling and reduce foraging time. These are important adaptations all the more as due to the low food density prevailing in desert habitats foraging Cataglyphis and Ocymyrmex ants have to cover large distances within their physically demanding foraging grounds.

Standardised classification of pre-release development in male-brooding pipefish, seahorses, and seadragons (Family Syngnathidae)

BackgroundMembers of the family Syngnathidae share a unique reproductive mode termed male pregnancy. Males carry eggs in specialised brooding structures for several weeks and release free-swimming offspring. Here we describe a systematic investigation of pre-release development in syngnathid fishes, reviewing available data for 17 species distributed across the family. This work is complemented by in-depth examinations of the straight-nosed pipefish Nerophis ophidion, the black-striped pipefish Syngnathus abaster, and the potbellied seahorse Hippocampus abdominalis.ResultsWe propose a standardised classification of early syngnathid development that extends from the activation of the egg to the release of newborn. The classification consists of four developmental periods – early embryogenesis, eye development, snout formation, and juvenile – which are further divided into 11 stages. Stages are characterised by morphological traits that are easily visible in live and preserved specimens using incident-light microscopy.ConclusionsOur classification is derived from examinations of species representing the full range of brooding-structure complexity found in the Syngnathidae, including tail-brooding as well as trunk-brooding species, which represent independent evolutionary lineages. We chose conspicuous common traits as diagnostic features of stages to allow for rapid and consistent staging of embryos and larvae across the entire family. In view of the growing interest in the biology of the Syngnathidae, we believe that the classification proposed here will prove useful for a wide range of studies on the unique reproductive biology of these male-brooding fish.

Are generic early-warning signals reliable indicators of population collapse in rotifers?

Timely identification of endangered populations is vital to save them from extirpation. Here we tested whether six commonly used early-warning metrics are useful predictors of impending extirpation in laboratory rotifer (Brachionus calyciflorus) populations. To this end, we cultured nine rotifer clones in a constant laboratory environment, in which the rotifer populations were known to grow well, and in a deteriorating environment, in which the populations eventually perished. We monitored population densities in both environments until the populations in the deteriorating environment had gone extinct. We then used the population-density time series to compute the early-warning metrics and the temporal trends in these metrics. We found true positives (i.e. correct signals) in only two metrics, the standard deviation and the coefficient of variation, but the standard deviation also generated a false positive. Moreover, the signal produced by the coefficient of variation appeared when the populations in the deteriorating environment were about to cross the critical threshold and began to decline. As such, it cannot be regarded as an early-warning signal. Together, these findings support the growing evidence that density-based generic early-warning metrics—against their intended use—might not be universally suited to identify populations that are about to collapse.

Fiber up-sampling and quality assessment of tractograms – towards quantitative brain connectivity

Diffusion MRI tractography enables to investigate white matter pathways noninvasively by reconstructing estimated fiber pathways. However, such tractograms remain biased and nonquantitative. Several techniques have been proposed to reestablish the link between tractography and tissue microstructure by modeling the diffusion signal or fiber orientation distribution (FOD) with the given tractogram and optimizing each fiber or compartment contribution according to the diffusion signal or FOD. Nevertheless, deriving a reliable quantification of connectivity strength between different brain areas is still a challenge. Moreover, evaluating the quality of a tractogram and measuring the possible error sources contained in a specific reconstructed fiber bundle also remains difficult. Lastly, all of these optimization techniques fail if specific fiber populations within a tractogram are underrepresented, for example, due to algorithmic constraints, anatomical properties, fiber geometry or seeding patterns.