In 2020, Myrmecological News awards for the second time the Best Paper of the previous year. From 7 January to 21 January, the editorial board and the community could vote for their most favourite papers published in 2019.

It is now our great pleasure to announce the winner of the certificate of this Best Paper 2019 and the voucher worth the Article Processing Charge (700 EUR) of a future contribution in Myrmecological News:

“The learning walks of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)” by Jochen Zeil and Pauline N. Fleischmann

A View by Jochen Zeil

Pauline Fleischmann is a post-doctoral fellow at Würzburg University, Germany and has recently been awarded her PhD on the learning walks of Cataglyphis ants. One of her discoveries was that during their learning walks, Cataglyphis ants use the magnetic field as a compass reference. Jochen Zeil is an Emeritus professor at the Australian National University and continues to be interested in visual navigation and homing in insects.

We review what is known to date about the differences and similarities in the choreography of learning walks in ants. During these explorations, ants acquire information about the location of the nest, which they use during subsequent visual homing. We compare learning walks with the learning flights of bees and wasps and provide a list of open questions and topics for future research.

Originally published in Myrmecological News Blog, 6 February 2020