https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-022-00755-8
Review
Over 50 years of behavioural evidence on the magnetic sense in animals: what has been learnt and how?
1
School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, LL57 2UW, Bangor, Gwynedd, UK
2
Institute for Biology, Carl-Von-Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, 26111, Oldenburg, Germany
a
w.schneider@bangor.ac.uk
c
oliver.lindecke@uni-oldenburg.de
Received:
25
October
2022
Accepted:
6
December
2022
Published online:
11
January
2023
Magnetoreception is a key element in the sensory repertoire of many organisms, and it has been shown to play a particular role in animal navigation. While the first data to demonstrate a magnetic compass in songbirds through behavioural measures were presented decades ago, studies of behaviour are still the main source of information in learning about the magnetic senses. The behavioural evidence is, however, scattered with sometimes contradictory results. Partly, this is a consequence of a wide spectrum of methods used across multiple research groups studying different model organisms. This has limited the ability of researchers to pin down exactly how and why animals use the Earth’s magnetic field. Here, we lay out how a range of methods for testing behaviour spanning from field observations to laboratory manipulations can be used to test for a magnetic sense in animals. To this end, we discuss the principal limitations of behavioural testing in telling us how animals sense the magnetic field, and we argue that behaviour must go hand in hand with other fields to advance our understanding of the magnetic sense.
The original online version of this article was revised: In the Acknowledgements section of this article the grant number relating to the Leverhulme Trust was incorrectly given as R44C05 and should have been RPG-2020-128.
Physics of Animal Navigation. Guest editor: Miguel A. F. Sanjuán.
A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-023-00770-3.
Copyright comment corrected publication 2023
© The Author(s) 2023. corrected publication 2023
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