Abstract Codling

In many navigation and search problems navigational information can come from direct sources, such as visual or olfactory cues, or indirect sources, such as the movement directions of group neighbours or idiothetic movement (dead-reckoning). It is not immediately obvious how best to combine these direct and indirect sources of navigational information when determining how and where to move. I will demonstrate using theoretical arguments that in scenarios with realistic levels of error, the best navigational strategy for individual and collective movement is to counterintuitively rely more on indirect navigational information than direct navigational cues. I will discuss the potential difficulties in validating these predictions using real movement data, and relate this to more general problems inherent with path analysis of animal movement.