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Biology 272a: Comparative Animal Physiology Animal Navigation Why do animals navigate?  Reproduction  Food and other resources  Avoiding inclement conditions  Finding ‘home’  An ultimate question How do animals navigate? A proximate question Navigational Strategies  Trail following/route learning  Piloting  Path integration  Compass navigation  Map-and compass navigation Trail following/route learning  Trails may be visual (e.g. deer trails)  Olfactory (e.g. pheromone trails in ants) Piloting  Using landmark cues to find a known location Niko Tinbergen (1907-1988)  Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine (1973)  PhD Thesis (32 pages long!) on navigation in digger wasps (‘Beewolves’) Philanthus - Beewolves Hymenoptera: Crabronidae Piloting  Homing pigeons (once in home area)  Clark’s Nutcrackers (food caching) Path integration  “Dead Reckoning” Know direction & Distance and calculate position from there  Long way out, short way home  Path integration in desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis) How do ants know how far they’ve gone? How do they know which direction they’ve gone?  ‘Compass’ based on visual cues Celestial  Sun position  Polarised light  Star compasses Star compasses  Nocturnal migrating/flying birds Seabirds  (some) migrating song birds   Experiments Raise birds so they can see night sky, but not landmarks  Raise birds in planetariums with weird star configurations  Sun Compasses  Need to know time of day  If manipulate this, animal moves in wrong direction Sun Compasses Fig 17.5 Polarised light The direction from which this polarised light comes indicates the direction of the sun Fig. 17.6a Fig. 17.6b Polarised light Polarised light means you can tell where the sun is even on a cloudy day! How do insects see polarised light? Ommatidium Dorsal rim of Compound eye has particular ‘focus’ on polarised light Aligned Rhodopsin molecules Magnetic fields… they’re out there! Fig 17.8 Magnetic fields: organisms can detect them!  Magnetic bacteria use ‘magnetosomes’ to orient to magnetic fields Animals can detect magnetic fields… Migrating fin whales avoid areas of strong magnetic fields How do we show that animals can actually detect magnetic fields, and how do they do it? How do animals detect magnetism? I Trout  Magnetite crystals associated with specialised cells in nose of trout  If blocked, magnetic sense disappears How do animals detect magnetism? II - Birds  Evidence that the nose is required for magnetoreception in pigeons  cf. magnetite in trout nose Previous studies that blocked nose may have been blocking magnetoreception, not smell…  Most evidence suggests that magnetoreception = ‘map’ rather than ‘compass’ in birds  How do animals detect magnetism? III Birds (again)  Resonant molecules?  Some evidence from birds that light-affected molecules (e.g. rhodopsin) might return to unexcited state at different rates under different magnetic conditions  Some magnetoreception is lightdependent How do animals detect magnetism? IIIa: Flies A blue-light receptor is necessary for magnetoreception  Gene identified, knockout flies don’t respond to magnetic fields How do animals detect magnetism? IV: Sharks  Are known to swim in straight lines across long distances of open ocean  Can detect electricity  Ampullae of Lorenzini  Is electromagnetic induction as they swim generating currents they can detect? Magnetic sense can provide animals with both a map and a compass  Magnetic anomalies Map and compass  Many animals have a visual (or olfactory) map of their surroundings, which they combine with a compass to allow them to navigate. Fig 17.10 Navigational Strategies  Trail following/route learning  Piloting  Path integration  Compass navigation  Map-and compass navigation Reading for Tuesday  Biological clocks  Pp 383-389