Within arthropods, the investigation of navigational aspects including homing abilities has mainly focused on insect representatives, while other arthropod taxa have largely been ignored. As such, scorpions are rather underrepresented concerning behavioral studies for reasons such as low participation rates and motivational difficulties. Here, we review the sensory abilities of scorpions related to navigation. Furthermore, we present an improved laboratory setup to shed light on navigational abilities in general and homing behavior in particular. We tracked directed movements towards home shelters of the lesser Asian scorpion Mesobuthus eupeus to give a detailed description of their departure and return movements. To do so, we analyzed the departure and return angles as well as measures of directness like directional deviation, lateral displacement, and straightness indices. We compared these parameters under different light conditions and with blinded scorpions. The motivation of scorpions to leave their shelter depends strongly upon the light condition and the starting time of the experiment; highest participation rates were achieved with infrared conditions or blinded scorpions, and close to dusk. Naïve scorpions are capable of returning to a shelter object in a manner that is directionally consistent with the home vector. The first-occurring homing bouts are characterized by paths consisting of turns about 10 cm to either side of the straightest home path and a distance efficiency of roughly three-quarters of the maximum efficiency. Our results show that neither chemosensation nor vision, but rather path integration based on proprioception, plays a superior role in the homing of scorpions.

中文翻译：

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非视觉归宿和蝎子导航的当前状态。

在节肢动物中，对包括归巢能力在内的航行方面的研究主要集中在昆虫的代表上，而其他节肢动物类群则被很大程度上忽略了。因此，由于参与率低和动机困难等原因，蝎子在行为研究方面的代表性不足。在这里，我们回顾与导航有关的蝎子的感觉能力。此外，我们提出了一种改进的实验室设置，以阐明一般的导航能力，特别是导航行为。我们跟踪了朝着亚洲小蝎子Mesobuthus eupeus的家庭庇护所的定向运动，以详细描述它们的离开和返回运动。为此，我们分析了偏离角度和返回角度，以及方向性（如方向偏差）横向位移和直线度指标。我们将这些参数在不同的光照条件下与盲蝎进行了比较。蝎子离开庇护所的动机在很大程度上取决于光照条件和实验的开始时间。红外条件或蝎子盲，接近黄昏时，可以达到最高的参与率。幼稚的蝎子能够以与本垒矢量方向一致的方式返回庇护所。首次出现的归位回合的特征是，路径包括到最直的原始路径两侧约10厘米的转弯，距离效率约为最大效率的四分之三。我们的结果表明，既不是化学感应也不是视觉，而是基于本体感受的路径整合，