Effects of sun compass error on spatial search by Clark’s nutcrackers  

作　　者：Debbie M.KELLY Ken CHENG Russell BALDA Alan C.KAMIL 

机构地区：[1]Department of Psychology,University of Manitoba,Winnipeg,Canada [2]Department of Biological Sciences,Macquarie University,Sydney,Australia [3]Department of Biological Sciences,Northern Arizona University,Flagstaff,USA [4]Department of Biological Sciences,University of Nebraska-Lincoln,Lincoln,USA

出　　处：《Integrative Zoology》2019年第2期172-181,共10页整合动物学（英文版）

基　　金：a Natural Sciences Research Council grant RGPIN/312379-2009 to DMK,and a National Institutes of Health grant MH-61810 to AK.

摘　　要：Animals employ compasses during navigation,but little attention has been paid to how accuracy is maintained in the face of compass error,which is inevitable in biological systems.The use of multiple landmarks may min­imize the effect of compass error.We allowed Clark’s nutcrackers to cache seeds in an outdoor aviary with ei­ther one or four landmarks present,and subsequently subjected them to small clock-shifts mimicking the effects of compass error.As predicted,the results showed a significant decrease in search accuracy following the clock-shift when one landmark was present but not when four landmarks were present.These results support that nut­crackers encode information from the sun as well as terrestrial landmarks,and these spatial cues are used in a flexible manner.Overall,our results are important as they support the hypothesis that multiple landmarks may be used during situations where the sun compass has even a small amount of error.

关 键 词：Clark’s nutcracker clock-shift ERROR landmarks sun compass 

分 类 号：TP3[自动化与计算机技术—计算机科学与技术]