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Spatial navigation in fiddler crabs: Gaining absolute direction reference for goals away from home

Luke Hong1* and John E. Layne1
  • 1 University of Cincinnati, Department of Biological Sciences, United States

Accurate spatial navigation is essential for motile animals to reach specific locations suitable for foraging, reproduction, or shelter. The sensory cues supporting spatial navigation are of two classes: Idiothetic cues are produced by movement of the animal itself and allothetic cues are external and independent of animal movements. The difference between these is essential: using allothetic cues is much more likely to result in accurate navigation. The most common North American fiddler crabs, Uca pugilator (Bosc 1802), leave and return to their inconspicuous burrows in the sand without using allothetic cues. However, some Indo-Pacific Uca species perform navigational feats which seem impossible without allothetic cues. Specifically, they appear to have a sense of absolute direction, like a compass, which allows them to reach specific location away from home after emerging anew from the burrow. This is only possible if the sense of direction is calibrated against a stable, external cue, like the sun, or the earth’s magnetic field. To determine if the North American U. pugilator is also capable of obtaining an absolute reference direction, we analyzed the directions of their excursions from the burrow. We found that the excursion pattern of U. pugilator is highly non-random (z_29=8.44, P<0.001). This means that, when the crabs emerge from the burrow, at some level they ‘know’ the directions of previous excursions, and subsequent excursions are directed with reference to these. Such a reference can only be obtained from allothetic cues. To identify how U. pugilator obtains such reference direction, we manipulated sensory cues and observe the success or failure of a crab to orient in a way that requires an external cue. We found that U. pugilator uses gravity along with one or more sensory cues to gain reference direction (Experimental vs. Control: F_238=6.03, P=0.015. Experimental vs. Sham: F_52=5.47, P=0.023). This is the first instance, to our knowledge, of an animal using gravity to obtain a horizontal reference direction.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by Wieman Wendel Benedict Grant to LSH and by NSF (IOS 0749768) to JEL. We also thank Parth Patel for helping us collect data.

References

1. Papi, F. Animal Homing. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England, 1992).
2. Schone, H. Spatial Orientation: The Spatial Control of Behavior in Animals and Man. (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1984).
3. Mittelstaedt, H. & Mittelstaedt, M.-L. Mechanismen der Orientierung ohne richtende Aussenreize. Forschr. Zool. 46-58(1973).
4. Walls, M.L. & Layne, J.E. Direct evidence for distance measurement via flexible stride integration in the fiddler crab. Current biology: CB 19, 25-9(2009).
5. Cheng, K., Shettleworth, S.J., Huttenlocher, J. & Rieser, J.J. Bayesian integration of spatial information. Psychological Bulletin. 133, 625-637(2007)

Keywords: foraging behavior, reference direction, sensory cues, Uca

Conference: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012.

Presentation Type: Poster (but consider for Participant Symposium)

Topic: Orientation and Navigation

Citation: Hong L and Layne JE (2012). Spatial navigation in fiddler crabs: Gaining absolute direction reference for goals away from home. Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00306

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Received: 30 Apr 2012; Published Online: 07 Jul 2012.

* Correspondence: Mr. Luke Hong, University of Cincinnati, Department of Biological Sciences, Cincinnati, OH, 45219, United States, lhong1987@gmail.com