Summary: A situation-dependent switching of the primarily relied cues by foraging ants was strongly suggested through a combinatorial study of experiments and mathematical modeling for a species of garden ant, Lasius japonicus. First, through a series of experiments, it was found that, across a critical angle difference for homing ants, between the directions indicated by visual cues and chemical cues, the dominating homing route sharply changed from an optimal path to a redundant (nonoptimal) path. Next, through a mathematical modeling approach to reproduce the above experiments, it was shown that the above sharp change of the homing path is attributed to the switching of the primarily relied cues, from chemical cues to visual cues.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1358.92006].