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Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation
The navigation by chemo-textural familiarity hypothesis (NCFH) suggests that scorpions use their midventral pectines to gather chemical and textural information near their burrows and use this information as they subsequently return home. For NCFH to be viable, animals must somehow acquire home-dire...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Company of Biologists Ltd
2022
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250797/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35638243 http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/jeb.243947 |
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author | Gaffin, Douglas D. Muñoz, Maria G. Hoefnagels, Mariëlle H. |
author_facet | Gaffin, Douglas D. Muñoz, Maria G. Hoefnagels, Mariëlle H. |
author_sort | Gaffin, Douglas D. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The navigation by chemo-textural familiarity hypothesis (NCFH) suggests that scorpions use their midventral pectines to gather chemical and textural information near their burrows and use this information as they subsequently return home. For NCFH to be viable, animals must somehow acquire home-directed ‘tastes’ of the substrate, such as through path integration (PI) and/or learning walks. We conducted laboratory behavioral trials using desert grassland scorpions (Paruroctonus utahensis). Animals reliably formed burrows in small mounds of sand we provided in the middle of circular, sand-lined behavioral arenas. We processed overnight infrared video recordings with a MATLAB script that tracked animal movements at 1–2 s intervals. In all, we analyzed the movements of 23 animals, representing nearly 1500 h of video recording. We found that once animals established their home burrows, they immediately made one to several short, looping excursions away from and back to their burrows before walking greater distances. We also observed similar excursions when animals made burrows in level sand in the middle of the arena (i.e. no mound provided). These putative learning walks, together with recently reported PI in scorpions, may provide the crucial home-directed information requisite for NCFH. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9250797 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | The Company of Biologists Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-92507972022-07-12 Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation Gaffin, Douglas D. Muñoz, Maria G. Hoefnagels, Mariëlle H. J Exp Biol Research Article The navigation by chemo-textural familiarity hypothesis (NCFH) suggests that scorpions use their midventral pectines to gather chemical and textural information near their burrows and use this information as they subsequently return home. For NCFH to be viable, animals must somehow acquire home-directed ‘tastes’ of the substrate, such as through path integration (PI) and/or learning walks. We conducted laboratory behavioral trials using desert grassland scorpions (Paruroctonus utahensis). Animals reliably formed burrows in small mounds of sand we provided in the middle of circular, sand-lined behavioral arenas. We processed overnight infrared video recordings with a MATLAB script that tracked animal movements at 1–2 s intervals. In all, we analyzed the movements of 23 animals, representing nearly 1500 h of video recording. We found that once animals established their home burrows, they immediately made one to several short, looping excursions away from and back to their burrows before walking greater distances. We also observed similar excursions when animals made burrows in level sand in the middle of the arena (i.e. no mound provided). These putative learning walks, together with recently reported PI in scorpions, may provide the crucial home-directed information requisite for NCFH. The Company of Biologists Ltd 2022-06-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9250797/ /pubmed/35638243 http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/jeb.243947 Text en © 2022. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Gaffin, Douglas D. Muñoz, Maria G. Hoefnagels, Mariëlle H. Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation |
title | Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation |
title_full | Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation |
title_fullStr | Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation |
title_full_unstemmed | Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation |
title_short | Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation |
title_sort | evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250797/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35638243 http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/jeb.243947 |
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