Channel Walks–a Naturalist’s Approach of Experimentally Studying Ant Navigation in the Field

Insect navigation has become a fascinating and ever expanding field of neuroethological research. From sphecid wasps, honey bees, and desert ants to monarch butterflies and bogong moths, and even to drosophilid flies, several species are now intensively studied by several research groups using various experimental approaches and formulating various hypotheses about how insects find their way. Some species like the hymenopterans mentioned above are central place foragers performing round-trip journeys from and to their home base. Others like the lepidopterans are migrants embarking on long-distance journeys to-and-fro, with individuals either journeying one-way (and the next generations travelling back) or both ways. Given this diversity of navigational challenges for the animals it is important to understand the ecological setting within which each navigator operates, the tasks it actually must accomplish, and the various modes of behavior that evolved for tackling these tasks. Hence, conceptual approaches and experimental design should be firmly rooted in detailed studies of the navigator’s natural history. Here, I let the reader join us in our approaches of studying desert ant navigation by illustrating, as an example, the design of our varied channel paradigms. I tell my story in a personal as well as an essayistic and narrative style, not least because the formal scheme of scientific papers may run the risk of hiding or even misrepresenting the historical and idiosyncratic ways of how the described research has actually been done.