Abstract

Many animals store information about their external environment in memory and use this information to facilitate movement and decision-making. The information used to navigate has been described for numerous animals and is dependent on the ecology of the animal. Spider webs make up nearly all of a spider’s physical and sensory environment. Here, we first asked whether black widow spiders form memories of their web and then asked whether the contents of these memories include a path integration vector. Black widows made navigational errors when we rotated their web in their absence and searched about the web upon realizing they made an error. Black widows were able to move on their web without retracing their steps, often taking shortcuts to a goal location without sensory cues to guide navigation. Black widows also began moving back to their retreat on a path parallel to their path out from the retreat, even after being moved on the web, and searched about the web for the retreat after not finding it initially. These results show that black widows use path integration when navigating. These results suggest that using internal representations of an animal’s position within its environment, such as by using path integration, is widespread among animals with varied brain types and sensory ecologies, representing perhaps a convergent solution to common navigational problems.

Significance statement

The ability of animals to store information in memory that is then used in decision-making has evolved multiple times, in vertebrates and invertebrate lineages. The information and cognitive mechanism used for representing an animal’s location within its environment vary in complexity, but the methods that have been described rely on vision for at least some of the sensory information used to form representations. Using behavioral assays, we have shown that black widow spiders represent their position relative to their home as a path integration vector. Black widows have poor vision and rely primarily on vibrations transmitted through the web to sense their environment. Our results indicate that internal representations are a general solution to brains’ problem of integrating sensory information, and do not need acute vision to evolve.

中文翻译：

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黑寡妇蜘蛛在其网站上使用路径集成

摘要

许多动物将有关其外部环境的信息存储在内存中，并使用此信息来促进运动和决策。已经针对许多动物描述了用于导航的信息，并且该信息取决于动物的生态。蜘蛛网几乎构成了蜘蛛的身体和感觉环境。在这里，我们首先询问黑寡妇蜘蛛是否形成了其网络的记忆，然后询问这些记忆的内容是否包含路径积分向量。当黑人寡妇在他们不在的情况下旋转他们的网时，他们发现导航错误，并在发现他们出了错的情况下搜索了网络。黑人寡妇能够在网上移动而无需追回自己的脚步，他们常常将捷径带到目标位置，而没有感觉线索来引导导航。黑人寡妇甚至在网上移动后，也开始沿着与撤退路线平行的路径返回撤退路线，并在最初未找到撤退路线的情况下在网上搜索撤退路线。这些结果表明，黑寡妇在导航时会使用路径整合。这些结果表明，使用动物内部环境位置表示法（例如使用路径整合）在具有不同脑型和感觉生态的动物中很普遍，这也许是解决常见航行问题的一种收敛方法。

重要性声明

动物在脊椎动物和无脊椎动物世系中将信息存储在记忆中然后用于决策的能力已经发展了多次。用于表示动物在其环境中的位置的信息和认知机制在复杂性方面有所不同，但是已描述的方法至少依赖视觉来形成某种表示形式的感觉信息。使用行为分析，我们已经表明，黑寡妇蜘蛛将它们相对于其家的位置作为路径整合向量来表示。黑人寡妇视力较差，主要依靠通过网络传播的振动来感知其环境。我们的结果表明，内部表示是解决大脑整合感官信息问题的一般解决方案，不需要敏锐的视力即可发展。