Scorpion Navigation Case Summary

Douglas Gaffin gave a talk over his current research in chemo-textural familiarity hypothesis for scorpion navigation. Because scorpions cannot maintain their body heat they stay in their burrows during the day and then come out at night. The main question of this talk was how do they find their burrows? They have sensory neurons such as medial and lateral eyes, but the most important one for this topic is their paired pectines. These pectines brush the ground as they walk detecting chemical and tactile information. Their pectines are made of a flexible spin with many teeth, within this are Pe cincilla that transduces sensor information. There are 10 – 15 neurons in every cilla with a near range olfaction, similar to taste. For recordings tungsten electrodes fit easily through the flexible base of the pegs. One
He used google earth to simulate the familiarity hypothesis by making an algorithmic program that basically followed route navigation. Look around, if something looks familiar, take a step forward, repeat. Gaffin had three main premises, 1. Matrixes of sensor to detect patterns. 2. The environment plenty of unique patterns. 3. You initially learn by going toward your goal. This model was based off bees, but he hypothesized that pectines would work the same because scorpions taste and touch the ground in the same algorithm. He found that his three premises were met in that there was a large enough matrix to detect patterns, there is a minimum of 8 pegs to 2 chemicals, and that there is abundant information available for navigation. A question remaining is the difference between how chemical and textural stimulus affects the scorpion. He found that using this idea, robots simulate and support his ideas. I liked the question Dr. Lee asked about how the responsible the chemoreceptors are verses the texture of the environment, and how a flood of ideas came after