A Neural Model of Landmark Navigation in the Fiddler Crab Uca lactea

The fiddler crabs, Uca lactea, which live on intertidal mudflats, exhibit a remarkable ability to return to its burrow. It has been reported that the species usually use path integration, an ideothetic mechanism for short-range homing. During the mating season, however, the accumulation error of the process increases due to vigorous courtship movement. To compensate for this, most courting males construct the vertical mud structures, called semidomes, at the entrance of their burrows and use them as landmarks. Here, we suggest a possible neural model that demonstrates how visual landmark navigation could be implemented in the fiddler crab’s central nervous system. The model consisting of two levels of population of neurons, is based on the snapshot hypothesis and a simplified version of Franz’s algorithm is used for the computation of home vector.