Vertical-surface navigation in the Neotropical whip spider Paraphrynus laevifrons (Arachnida: Amblypygi)
- PDF / 768,957 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 66 Downloads / 178 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Vertical‑surface navigation in the Neotropical whip spider Paraphrynus laevifrons (Arachnida: Amblypygi) Patrick Casto1,2 · Daniel D. Wiegmann1,2 · Vincent J. Coppola4 · Daniele Nardi5 · Eileen A. Hebets6 · Verner P. Bingman2,3 Received: 28 April 2020 / Revised: 22 July 2020 / Accepted: 4 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Studies on whip spider navigation have focused on their ability to locate goal locations in the horizontal plane (e.g., when moving along the ground). However, many species of tropical whip spiders reside and move along surfaces in the vertical plane (e.g., trees). Under controlled laboratory conditions, the current study investigated the ability of the tropical whip spider, Paraphrynus laevifrons, to return to a home shelter on a vertical surface in the presence of numerous, similar and competing refuge sites, as well as the distribution of navigational errors in the vertical, horizontal and diagonal plane. We also assessed the relative importance of sensory cues originating from a previously occupied home shelter compared to the position of a previously occupied shelter in guiding shelter choice. It was found that P. laevifrons displays robust fidelity in re-locating a home shelter on a vertical surface. When navigational errors did occur, they were not significantly different in all three directions. Additionally, cue-conflict test trials revealed that cues associated with an original home shelter, likely self-deposited chemical signals, were more important than sources of positional information in guiding the shelter choice of P. laevifrons. Keywords Arthropod · Chemoreception · Olfaction · Spatial navigation · Vertical information
Introduction Navigational behavior has been extensively studied in a number of arthropod taxa including desert ants, fiddler crabs, bees and spiders (reviewed by Cheng 2012). Many of the terrestrial arthropods that have been studied inhabit two dimensional or slightly cluttered environments and use * Patrick Casto [email protected] 1
Department of Biological Sciences, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA
2
J.P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA
3
Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA
4
Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of Findlay, Findlay, OH, USA
5
Department of Psychological Science, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, USA
6
School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA
sensory-specific navigational strategies. For example, the desert ant, Cataglyphis fortis, and Australian ant, Melophorus bagoti, inhabit mostly flat, ground surfaces with little clutter and canopy (Cheng et al. 2012). In this type of habitat, arthropod navigation is often guided by path integration (Wehner 2003) and goal-oriented movements with respect to stimuli found in the environment (e.g., landmark following (Wehner 2003; Collett 2010
Data Loading...
