Visual homing: an insect perspective

Date

2011

Authors

Zeil, Jochen

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Elsevier

Abstract

The ability to learn the location of places in the world and to revisit them repeatedly is crucial for all aspects of animal life on earth. It underpins animal foraging, predator avoidance, territoriality, mating, nest construction and parental care. Much theoretical and experimental progress has recently been made in identifying the sensory cues and the computational mechanisms that allow insects (and robots) to find their way back to places, while the neurobiological mechanisms underlying navigational abilities are beginning to be unravelled in vertebrate and invertebrate models. Studying visual homing in insects is interesting, because they allow experimentation and view-reconstruction under natural conditions, because they are likely to have evolved parsimonious, yet robust solutions to the homing problem and because they force us to consider the viewpoint of navigating animals, including their sensory and computational capacities.

Description

Keywords

Keywords: association; foraging; insect; learning; mating; neurobiology; nonhuman; predator; priority journal; review; sensory system; territoriality; visual homing; visual system parameters; walking; Animals; Cues; Homing Behavior; Insects; Learning; Visual Percep

Citation

Source

Current Opinion in Neurobiology

Type

Journal article

Book Title

Entity type

Access Statement

License Rights

Restricted until

2037-12-31