Winner of the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences
A world-renowned researcher of animal behavior reveals the extraordinary orienteering skills of desert ants, offering a thrilling account of the sophisticated ways insects function in their natural environments.
Cataglyphis desert ants are agile ultrarunners who can tolerate near-lethal temperatures when they forage in the hot midday sun. But it is their remarkable navigational abilities that make these ants so fascinating to study. Whether in the Sahara or its ecological equivalents in the Namib Desert and Australian Outback, the Cataglyphis navigators can set out foraging across vast expanses of desert terrain in search of prey, and then find the shortest way home. For almost half a century, Rüdiger Wehner and his collaborators have devised elegant experiments to unmask how they do it.
Through a lively and lucid narrative, Desert Navigator offers a firsthand look at the extraordinary navigational skills of these charismatic desert dwellers and the experiments that revealed how they strategize and solve complex problems. Wehner and his team discovered that these insect navigators use visual cues in the sky that humans are unable to see, the Earth's magnetic field, wind direction, a step counter, and panoramic "snapshots" of landmarks, among other resources. The ants combine all of this information to steer an optimal course. At any given time during their long journey, they know exactly where to go. It is no wonder these nimble and versatile creatures have become models in the study of animal navigation.
Desert Navigator brings to light the marvelous capacity and complexity found in these remarkable insects and shows us how mini brains can solve mega tasks.
- 401 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Prologue
- 1. Setting the Scene
- 2. The Thermophiles
- 3. Finding Directions
- 4. Estimating Distances
- 5. Integrating Paths
- 6. Using Landmarks
- 7. Organizing the Journey
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Illustration Credits
- Index
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Yes, you can access Desert Navigator by Rüdiger Wehner in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Ecology. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.