Goal-oriented learning and navigation is well known in eusocial insects. The solitary foraging of nocturnal bull ants Myrmecia midas in their visually complex environment relies on path integration and landmark learning. While this species seems to be ‘sensitive’ to handling and reacts to visual changes in their surroundings, not much is known about how added olfactory stimuli impact their route navigation on a vertical surfac...

In recent years the bull ant Myrmecia midas Clark, 1951, has attracted attention for its impressive visual navigation during its nocturnal activity. Still, a basic understanding of this species’ ecology is lacking. Nest relocation and colony fissions are rarely observed and largely undocumented in M. midas colonies. In the current study, we quantified the nest-relocation and colony-splitting behaviour of suburban populations o...

At the start of a journey home or to a foraging site, ants often stop, interrupting their forward movement, turn on the spot a number of times, and fixate in different directions. These scanning bouts are thought to provide visual information for choosing a path to travel. The temporal organization of such scanning bouts has implications about the neural organisation of navigational behaviour. We examined (1) the temporal dist...

Many insects orient by comparing current panoramic views of their environment to memorised views. We tested the navigational abilities of night-active Myrmecia midas foragers while we blocked segments of their visual panorama. Foragers failed to orient homewards when the front view, lower elevations, entire terrestrial surround, or the full panorama was blocked. Initial scanning increased whenever the visual panorama was block...