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Citation

Pritchard DJ, Hurly TA & Healy SD (2015) Effects of landmark distance and stability on accuracy of reward relocation. Animal Cognition, 18 (6), pp. 1285-1297. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-015-0896-7

Abstract
Although small-scale navigation is well studied in a wide range of species, much of what is known about landmark use by vertebrates is based on laboratory experiments. To investigate how vertebrates in the wild use landmarks, we trained wild male rufous hummingbirds to feed from a ?ower that was placed in a constant spatial relationship with two arti?cial landmarks. In the ?rst experiment, the landmarks and ?ower were 0.25, 0.5 or 1 m apart and we always moved them 3–4 m after each visit by the bird. In the second experiment, the landmarks and ?ower were always 0.25 m apart and we moved them either 1 or 0.25 m between trials. In tests, in which we removed the ?ower, the hummingbirds stopped closer to the predicted ?ower location when the landmarks had been closer to the ?ower during training. However, while the distance that the birds stopped from the landmarks and predicted ?ower location was unaffected by the distance that the landmarks moved between trials, the birds directed their search nearer to the predicted direction of the ?ower, relative to the landmarks, when the landmarks and ?ower were more stable in the environment. In the ?eld, then, landmarks alone were suf?cient for the birds to determine the distance of a reward but not its direction.

Keywords
Navigation; Landmarks; Spatial memory; Spatial cognition; Orientation; Hummingbirds

Journal
Animal Cognition: Volume 18, Issue 6

• Accepted manuscript