Tropical treasure trove
نویسنده
چکیده
for Arid Zone Research, the site where much of the research is now done, although it is no longer owned by the CSIRO, but we could not find M. baogti on that day. The reasons are unclear why they were not out, as the ants are all over that site. We then went out of town to Simpson's Gap, a tourist attraction in the West McDonnells mountain range west of Alice Springs. In a magic moment on getting out of the car at the Visitor's Centre, I spied a sizeable red ant dashing across the parking lot. We spent a few happy days noting the activity pattern of one nest. M. bagoti nests were all over the site. The rest as they say is history, with the research on the red honey ant still going on. What is your favorite activity in doing science? Oh, without hesitation, it is playing with data. Data rule! When a student or a research assistant, and sometimes I myself, come up with a spreadsheet of freshly gathered data, then I really enjoy playing with the numbers, plotting graphs, doing a bunch of analyses, most of which never get reported, and generally exploring all angles as much as possible. Playing with data is an activity that can dislodge me from that admin task I should be doing for the afternoon meeting, or grading a student's paper. Otherwise, I am quite disciplined about what I have to do. What are some key issues in navigation now? I'll find out in September when I attend a forum on comparative cognition. At these Ernst Strüngmann fora, participants sit around and discuss key issues on selected topics. The topics of this forum are navigation, decision and memory processes, animal communication, and social processes. I am of course taking part on the navigation topic. I would say that a key issue is what view-based navigation consists of, and what that tells us about the nature and evolution of intelligence. Most terrestrial animals move in visually rich environments, our species included. It is information overload rather than a dearth for most animals. Our central Australian desert ants are different from those that live on salt pans or in the barren deserts, because the Australian desert is much like our urban environment in that it is filled with a lot of objects, many of which are similar. I have the sense that …
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عنوان ژورنال:
- Current Biology
دوره 20 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2010