Figure 1.

Experimental area and set-up. Six release stations are shown together with the location of the nest and the nest's foraging tree on an aerial image. The typical foraging corridor for this nest is marked by blue arrows. Square insets on the right show on top the release platform with the central hole to accommodate the transport vials, a compass and a calibration pattern. Bottom inset shows an enlarged image of an ant with red circles indicating the positions on the head and the blue circle the position on the body, the x/y coordinates of which were extracted to determine head and body orientation. Inset on the bottom left shows three example paths of ants on the round release platform with a line indicating head (gaze) orientation pointing into the direction of the dots that mark the position of the front of the head every 40 ms.