Question

How did Tinbergen's experiment with digger wasp females demonstrate they used memory to navigate in their local environment?

1. He arranged pinecones and pinecone odor around their actual nest, moved just the pinecones to a fake nest while the female was foraging, and she flew back to the matching arrangement of pinecones, not the odor, indicating a memory of the cones' positioning.

2. He dug branching nests for females and allowed them to explore and lay larvae in the nests. He then moved the larvae in the nest to a new location while the female was foraging, and the female was still able to locate the larvae in the nest demonstrating a memory of how the nest was arranged.

3. He released mother digger wasps near beehives where prey was abundant, recaptured the mothers and brought them to nests with their larvae present, and then re-released them. They found their way back to bees hive demonstrating a memory of its location.

4. He arranged pinecones around their actual nest, rearranged the pinecones while the female was foraging, and she flew back to the same area but could not find her nest, indicating a memory of the cones' positioning and failure to recognize the new cone positioning.

Answer 1

Tinbergen did an experiment with digger wasp females. Digger wasp females makes their nests in sand burrows.

Tinbergen used training and testing conditions to determine the navigation pattern of the wasp.

In his training conditions, when the wasp was in the nest, he arranged pine cones around her nest. He observed when the wasp came out to go for foraging, she made some flights around the nest and went away.

In his testing condition, he moved the orientation of the pine cones to a different place nearby. He then observed that when the wasp returned she went for the newly placed pine cones even though her nest was not present there.

He also used pine cone orientation and pine scented plates as the training conditions. He then moved the scented plates to a different position than the nest and the pine cone orientation to another place. But here he observed that when the wasp is returning from hunt, she went for the differently placed pine cones instead of the pine scented place. This showed that scent had nothing to do with her navigation memory.

This way he concluded that the wasp used orientation of surrounding environment to navigate to and fro her nest.

So the correct answer for the given question is 1. He arranged pinecones and pinecone odor around their actual nest, moved just the pinecones to a fake nest while the female was foraging, and she flew back to the matching arrangement of pinecones, not the odor, indicating a memory of the cones' positioning.