Foraging ants use multiple navigational strategies, including path integration and visual panorama cues, which are used simultaneously and weighted based upon context, the environment and the species’ sensory ecology. In particular, the amount of visual clutter in the habitat predicts the weighting given to the forager’s path integrator and surrounding panorama cues. Here, we characterize the individual cue use and cue weighting of the Sonoran Desert ant, Novomessor cockerelli, by testing foragers after local and distant displacement. Foragers attend to both a path-integration-based vector and the surrounding panorama to navigate, on and off foraging routes. When both cues were present, foragers initially oriented to their path integrator alone, yet weighting was dynamic, with foragers abandoning the vector and switching to panorama-based navigation after a few meters. If displaced to unfamiliar locations, experienced foragers travelled almost their full homeward vector (∼85 %) before the onset of search. Through panorama analysis, we show views acquired on-route provide sufficient information for orientation over only short distances, with rapid parallel decreases in panorama similarity and navigational performance after even small local displacements. These findings are consistent with heavy path integrator weighting over the panorama when the local habitat contains few prominent terrestrial cues.

觅食蚂蚁使用多种导航策略，包括路径整合和视觉全景提示，这些策略可以同时使用，并根据环境，环境和物种的感官生态进行加权。特别是，栖息地中的视觉杂波数量可以预测觅食者的路径积分器和周围全景提示的权重。在这里，我们描述了Sonoran Desert蚂蚁Novomessor cockerelli的个体提示使用和提示权重，通过在局部和远距离位移后测试觅食者。觅食者同时注意基于路径整合的矢量和周围的全景图，以在觅食路线上导航，上下导航。当两个提示同时出现时，觅食者最初只面向他们的路径积分器，但权重却是动态的，觅食者放弃了矢量并在几米后切换到基于全景的导航。如果被转移到陌生的地方，有经验的觅食者在搜寻开始之前就几乎走了他们全部的归巢媒介（约85％）。通过全景分析，我们显示了沿途获取的视图仅在短距离上即可提供足够的方向信息，即使在很小的局部位移后，全景相似度和导航性能也会迅速平行下降。