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Dung beetles ignore landmarks for straight-line orientation

Author

Summary, in English

Upon locating a suitable dung pile, ball-rolling

dung beetles shape a piece of dung into a ball and roll it

away in a straight line. This guarantees that they will not

return to the dung pile, where they risk having their ball

stolen by other beetles. Dung beetles are known to use

celestial compass cues such as the sun, the moon and the

pattern of polarised light formed around these light sources

to roll their balls of dung along straight paths. Here, we

investigate whether terrestrial landmarks have any influence

on straight-line orientation in dung beetles. We find

that the removal or re-arrangement of landmarks has no

effect on the beetle’s orientation precision. Celestial compass

cues dominate straight-line orientation in dung beetles

so strongly that, under heavily overcast conditions or when

prevented from seeing the sky, the beetles can no longer

orient along straight paths. To our knowledge, this is the

only animal with a visual compass system that ignores the

extra orientation precision that landmarks can offer.

Publishing year

2012

Language

English

Pages

17-23

Publication/Series

Journal of Comparative Physiology A

Volume

199

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Biological Sciences

Keywords

  • Dung beetle
  • Scarabaeidae
  • Scarabaeinae
  • Landmark
  • Orientation

Status

Published

Research group

  • Lund Vision Group

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1432-1351