Chris Armstrong
Homing Pigeons Respond to Time-Compensated Solar Cues Even in Sight of the Loft
Armstrong, Chris; Wilkinson, Helen; Meade, Jessica; Biro, Dora; Freeman, Robin; Guilford, Tim
Authors
Helen Wilkinson
Jessica Meade
Dora Biro
Robin Freeman
Tim Guilford
Abstract
The sun has long been thought to guide bird navigation as the second step in a two-stage process, in which determining position using a map is followed by course setting using a compass, both over unfamiliar and familiar terrain. The animal’s endogenous clock time-compensates the solar compass for the sun’s apparent movement throughout the day, and this allows predictable deflections in orientation to test for the compass’ influence using clock-shift manipulations. To examine the influence of the solar compass during a highly familiar navigational task, 24 clock-shifted homing pigeons were precision-tracked from a release site close to and in sight of their final goal, the colony loft. The resulting trajectories displayed significant partial deflection from the loft direction as predicted by either fast or slow clock-shift treatments. The partial deflection was also found to be stable along the entire trajectory indicating regular updating of orientation via input from the solar compass throughout the final approach flight to the loft. Our results demonstrate that time-compensated solar cues are deeply embedded in the way birds orient during homing flight, are accessed throughout the journey and on a remarkably fine-grained scale, and may be combined effectively simultaneously with direct guidance from familiar landmarks, even when birds are flying towards a directly visible goal.
Citation
Armstrong, C., Wilkinson, H., Meade, J., Biro, D., Freeman, R., & Guilford, T. (2013). Homing Pigeons Respond to Time-Compensated Solar Cues Even in Sight of the Loft. PLoS ONE, 8(5), Article e63130. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0063130
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Mar 27, 2013 |
Online Publication Date | May 24, 2013 |
Publication Date | May 24, 2013 |
Deposit Date | May 15, 2018 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 28, 2024 |
Journal | PLoS ONE |
Publisher | Public Library of Science |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 8 |
Issue | 5 |
Article Number | e63130 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0063130 |
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
© 2013 Armstrong et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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