These animals typically live in holes found in their benthic environments over which they are extremely territorial. Despite the importance of their burrows, mantis shrimp regularly leave their homes for tasks such as foraging. Through my research, I investigate how mantis shrimp find their way home after foraging, uncovering the navigational strategies and sensory information mantis shrimp use while they traverse the sea-floor. |
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In this article in Current Biology, my coauthor and I show that mantis shrimp navigate home using path integration, a vector based navigation strategy. We demonstrate that they orient using the sun and celestial polarization patterns. However, when celestial cues are obscured, such as during an overcast day, mantis shrimp appear to orient using idiothetic cues (self-motion cues internal to the body).
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Path integration is an excellent way to find home, but it is often not perfect. In this article in the Journal of Experimental Biology, my coauthor and I show that when path integration doesn't lead a mantis shrimp directly home, it begins a stereotyped search behavior that expands in a manner predicted by optimal search theory. Even more, mantis shrimp appear to scale the sizes of their searches by error accumulated during path integration. We received the cover for the issue the paper was published in!
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