Flight-Induced Compass Representation in the Monarch Butterfly Heading Network
| Autor: | Basil el Jundi, David Dreyer, Eric J. Warrant, Myriam Franzke, M. Jerome Beetz, Christian Kraus, Martin F. Strube-Bloss, Christine Merlin, Wolfgang Rössler |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Heading (navigation)
Computer science General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Monarch butterfly Animal migration Compass Animals State dependence Computer vision 030304 developmental biology Neurons 0303 health sciences biology business.industry Representation (systemics) biology.organism_classification Solar compass Brain region Butterfly Animal Migration Artificial intelligence General Agricultural and Biological Sciences business Butterflies 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | SSRN Electronic Journal. |
| ISSN: | 1556-5068 |
| DOI: | 10.2139/ssrn.3908784 |
| Popis: | For navigation, animals use a robust internal compass. Compass navigation is crucial for long-distance migrating animals like monarch butterflies, which use the sun to navigate over 4,000km to their overwintering sites every fall. Sun-compass neurons of the central complex have only been recorded in immobile butterflies, and experimental evidence for encoding the animals heading in these neurons is still missing. Although the activity of central-complex neurons exhibits a locomotor-dependent modulation in many insects, the function of such modulations remains unexplored. Here, we developed tetrode recordings from tethered flying monarch butterflies to reveal how flight modulates heading representation. We found that, during flight, heading-direction neurons change their tuning, transforming the central-complex network to function as a global compass. This compass is characterized by the dominance of processing steering feedback and allows for robust heading representation even under unreliable visual scenarios, an ideal strategy for maintaining a migratory heading over enormous distances. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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