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. 2020 Sep 25;23(6):1051–1061. doi: 10.1007/s10071-020-01431-x

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© The Author(s) 2020

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Fig. 4 — Differentiation between polarity and inclination compass. Under different experimental conditions, a polarity compass and an inclination compass will lead to different outcomes. a Natural magnetic field (H_e) in the northern hemisphere that is composed of the horizontal component (H_h) and the vertical component (H_v). b Horizontal component reversed. c Vertical component reversed. d Both horizontal and vertical component reversed. A polarity compass points towards magnetic north, i.e., in the direction of H_h. In contrast, an inclination compass measures the angle between the GMF lines and gravity (g), and distinguishes between poleward (p) and equatorward (e). Several bird species possess an inclination compass. For desert ants, it is an open question whether they possess a polarity compass or an inclination compass. Figure adapted from (Wiltschko and Wiltschko 2005; Lambinet et al. 2017)