The influence of landmarks on the systematic search behaviour of the desert isopod Hemilepistus reaumuri

SummaryThe desert isopod Hemilepistus reaumuri uses embankments of faeces, which each family builds around the entrance of its burrow, as an aid to homing after a foraging excursion. Though an isopod must touch its family's embankment (outer radius 8–15 cm) with its antennae before it can detect it, this landmark eases the return to the burrow appreciably. However, this advantage is imperiled by problems with similar landmarks. If during foraging the isopod goes astray and has to search for its landmark it also explores most of the alien families' embankments it detects, at least until it has located the burrow entrance within it. But it is not “trapped” by such similar landmarks. Whereas an isopod explores its own embankment until it comes to its burrow, digging for hours if the burrow entrance happens to be covered by sand, it leaves an alien embankment after most a few minutes and resumes its search. This shows that the isopod is able to distinguish this landmark from its own, probably by the same chemical badge it uses for the identification of family members. A desert isopod must explore alien embankments predominantly because it is not able to distinguish an alien embankment which is near its own burrow and may intersect its own embankment from others. Even when the animal explores and embankment in vain for a long time it could simply have overlooked its own burrow's entrance. In addition the isopod does not recognize an alien embankment which it has already explored. Therefore during a longer search, it has to explore an alien embankment again and again. H. reaumuri solves these “identification” problems, which correspond to the problems of other arthropods using landmarks for orientation, in a very successful manner. By repeatedly returning to a particular area it searches there more intensively, the greater the probability that its burrow is in this area according to the information, independent of landmarks, available to the animal. In most cases when it detects a particular alien embankment it explores it for a constant short time (on average 20.4 s). It follows that the isopod explores an alien embankment more intensively, the greater the probability that its burrow is within it. In this simple manner it approximately fulfills the rules of the best mathematical procedures that have recently been developed for solving search problems in which an object detected must be explored for some time before it can be distinguished from the real target. Theoretically these procedures are more successful than the search behaviour of H. reaumuri, but they require that either a particular landmark can be identified with certainty by exploration or that at least it can be recognized on a later contact. Although H. reaumuri does not meet these requirements, the success of its search behaviour is almost identical to that of the mathematical procedures.