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Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using Gaussian processes

Pigeons home along idiosyncratic habitual routes from familiar locations. It has been suggested that memorized visual landmarks underpin this route learning. However, the inability to experimentally alter the landscape on large scales has hindered the discovery of the particular features to which bi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mann, Richard, Freeman, Robin, Osborne, Michael, Garnett, Roman, Armstrong, Chris, Meade, Jessica, Biro, Dora, Guilford, Tim, Roberts, Stephen
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3033027/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20656739
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2010.0301
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author Mann, Richard
Freeman, Robin
Osborne, Michael
Garnett, Roman
Armstrong, Chris
Meade, Jessica
Biro, Dora
Guilford, Tim
Roberts, Stephen
author_facet Mann, Richard
Freeman, Robin
Osborne, Michael
Garnett, Roman
Armstrong, Chris
Meade, Jessica
Biro, Dora
Guilford, Tim
Roberts, Stephen
author_sort Mann, Richard
collection PubMed
description Pigeons home along idiosyncratic habitual routes from familiar locations. It has been suggested that memorized visual landmarks underpin this route learning. However, the inability to experimentally alter the landscape on large scales has hindered the discovery of the particular features to which birds attend. Here, we present a method for objectively classifying the most informative regions of animal paths. We apply this method to flight trajectories from homing pigeons to identify probable locations of salient visual landmarks. We construct and apply a Gaussian process model of flight trajectory generation for pigeons trained to home from specific release sites. The model shows increasing predictive power as the birds become familiar with the sites, mirroring the animal's learning process. We subsequently find that the most informative elements of the flight trajectories coincide with landscape features that have previously been suggested as important components of the homing task.
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spelling pubmed-30330272011-02-10 Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using Gaussian processes Mann, Richard Freeman, Robin Osborne, Michael Garnett, Roman Armstrong, Chris Meade, Jessica Biro, Dora Guilford, Tim Roberts, Stephen J R Soc Interface Research Articles Pigeons home along idiosyncratic habitual routes from familiar locations. It has been suggested that memorized visual landmarks underpin this route learning. However, the inability to experimentally alter the landscape on large scales has hindered the discovery of the particular features to which birds attend. Here, we present a method for objectively classifying the most informative regions of animal paths. We apply this method to flight trajectories from homing pigeons to identify probable locations of salient visual landmarks. We construct and apply a Gaussian process model of flight trajectory generation for pigeons trained to home from specific release sites. The model shows increasing predictive power as the birds become familiar with the sites, mirroring the animal's learning process. We subsequently find that the most informative elements of the flight trajectories coincide with landscape features that have previously been suggested as important components of the homing task. The Royal Society 2011-02-06 2010-07-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3033027/ /pubmed/20656739 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2010.0301 Text en This journal is © 2010 The Royal Society http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Mann, Richard
Freeman, Robin
Osborne, Michael
Garnett, Roman
Armstrong, Chris
Meade, Jessica
Biro, Dora
Guilford, Tim
Roberts, Stephen
Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using Gaussian processes
title Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using Gaussian processes
title_full Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using Gaussian processes
title_fullStr Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using Gaussian processes
title_full_unstemmed Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using Gaussian processes
title_short Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using Gaussian processes
title_sort objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using gaussian processes
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3033027/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20656739
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2010.0301
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