Properties of the atmosphere in assisting and hindering animal navigation

Abstract

Airborne birds, bats, and insects carry out some of the animal world's most spectacular migrations, migrations often supported by complex behavioralnavigational mechanisms. As aerial navigators, these animals must confront potentially disastrous wind conditions that can carry them far from their migratory route. But the same aerial migrators, as well as aerial residents, can also extract spatial information from the atmosphere to support navigation or just locating a goal across a range of spatial scales. The goal of our chapter is to first highlight some of the physical challenges associated with extracting navigational, principally olfactory, information from the air. We then go on to look at the complex role wind plays as a factor influencing navigation in the air and the documented occurrence of both short- and long-distance navigation and goal localization reliant on atmospheric chemicals/odors. The new field of aeroecology offers an exciting opportunity to revisit some of the classic questions examining the relationship among airborne migrations, wind, wind drift, and the need to carry out corrective reorientations, as well as opening up new investigations into the relationship between the properties of atmospheric stimuli and their potential use in supporting navigation.