Many animals use the earth’s magnetic field to migrate long distances with high accuracy; however, research has shown that individual responses to magnetic cues can be highly variable. This presents a paradox—how are animals capable of completing highly accurate migrations with such seemingly noisy navigational abilities? Because this feat seems improbable, it has been hypothesized that magnetoreception alone is insufficient for successful migrations, and animals must either switch to a more accurate, localized sensory system as they near the end of their journey, or integrate their magnetic sense over time. Another possible explanation for this inconsistency is that magnetoreceptive animals utilize collective navigation strategies to overcome the limitations of this sensory system without the loss of temporal resolution or relying on alternative sensory cues. In our upcoming paper, we show how collaborative navigation can impact high accuracy “pinch-point” style migrations using agent-based models. We compare agents using collective navigation to agents that rely on time-integration or on a localized, more accurate sensory system at the end of their journey. We demonstrate that collective navigation is the most efficient strategy for animals with noisy navigational abilities. Finally, we explore the impact of population loss on animals relying on collaborative navigation. We show that as population size decreases, individuals who are poor navigators are unable to successfully reach their destination. In these scenarios, a 50% reduction in the population size has the potential to reduce navigational success by up to 37%.
This work was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
