Animal Homing

This book is a timely summary of current research on distance orientation in animals, including such phenomena as spatial activity inside familiar areas and long distance migration. This is an area of scientific research fraught with difficult methodological problems to the seemingly unanswerable but fascinating questions about how animals manage to find home and other goals. This volume has collected together the work of leading research figures who have overcome many of these difficulties by innovative research techniques illuminating the how and why animals reach distant goals. It covers a wide range of invertebrates, giving an overview of homing performance in natural and experimental conditions, as well as the state of knowledge about the proximate mechanisms involved, the underlying neurophysiological machinery where known and the wider phylogenetic and evolutionary implications. It will be of interest to a wide range of behavioural scientists and naturalists.