The scale of natural insect navigation during foraging makes it challenging to study, in a controlled way, the navigation processes that an insect brain can support. Virtual Reality and trackball setups have offered experimental control over visual environments while studying tethered insects, but potential limitations and confounds introduced by tethering motivates the development of alternative untethered solutions. In this paper we validate the use of a motion compensator (or 'treadmill') to study visually-driven behaviour of freely moving wood ants (Formic rufa). We show how this setup allows naturalistic walking behaviour and motivation over long timeframes. Furthermore, we show that ants are able to transfer associative and navigational memories from classical maze and arena contexts to our treadmill. Thus, we demonstrate the possibility to study navigational behaviour over ecologically relevant durations (and virtual distances) in precisely controlled environments, bridging the gap between natural and highly controlled laboratory experiments.

中文翻译：

---

将无束缚的木蚂蚁（Formica rufa）中的方向记忆从在竞技场中行走到在运动补偿跑步机上行走转移

觅食过程中自然昆虫导航的规模使其难以以受控方式研究昆虫大脑可以支持的导航过程。在研究拴系昆虫时，虚拟现实和轨迹球设置提供了对视觉环境的实验控制，但是拴系带来的潜在局限性和混杂因素促使人们开发了其他束缚解决方案。在本文中，我们验证了使用运动补偿器（或“跑步机”）来研究自由移动的木蚂蚁（Formal rufa）的视觉驱动行为。我们展示了这种设置如何在很长的时间内允许自然主义的步行行为和动力。此外，我们证明了蚂蚁能够将联想和导航记忆从经典迷宫和竞技场环境转移到我们的跑步机上。从而，