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Homing is an animal's ability to navigate towards an original location, such as a breeding spot or foraging territory. Salmon and racing pigeons are famous for homing, but similar behaviors occur in groups as diverse as bees, frogs, rats, and sea turtles. There, homing individuals are known or suspected to rely on landmarks, the Earth's magnetic field, or the sky's pattern of polarized light to find their way back.

Another group known to display homing are cave-dwelling mysid shrimp, also known as possum shrimp for the pouches in which females carry their larvae. Results from previous studies suggested that mysids might use chemical cues to navigate to underwater caves, in the same way that coral larvae and coral-dwelling fish can distinguish between healthy and disturbed reefs.

"Here we show for the first time that mysids can tell the water-borne odor bouquet—its so-called chemical seascape—characteristic of their home cave apart from that of nearby caves," said Dr. Thierry Pérez, CNRS research director at the marine research station of Endoume near Marseille in France, and the lead author of a new study in Frontiers in Marine Science.

"This strongly suggests that these distinctive seascapes help them find their home cave again when they return from their nightly migrations."

Cave dwellers

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