Title: | Displacement experiments provide evidence for path integration in Drosophila |
Author(s): | Titova AV; Kau BE; Tibor S; Mach J; Vo-Doan TT; Wittlinger M; Straw AD; |
Address: | "Institute of Biology I, Faculty of Biology, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg, Germany. Bernstein Center Freiburg, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg, Germany" |
ISSN/ISBN: | 1477-9145 (Electronic) 0022-0949 (Print) 0022-0949 (Linking) |
Abstract: | "Like many other animals, insects are capable of returning to previously visited locations using path integration, which is a memory of travelled direction and distance. Recent studies suggest that Drosophila can also use path integration to return to a food reward. However, the existing experimental evidence for path integration in Drosophila has a potential confound: pheromones deposited at the site of reward might enable flies to find previously rewarding locations even without memory. Here, we show that pheromones can indeed cause naive flies to accumulate where previous flies had been rewarded in a navigation task. Therefore, we designed an experiment to determine if flies can use path integration memory despite potential pheromonal cues by displacing the flies shortly after an optogenetic reward. We found that rewarded flies returned to the location predicted by a memory-based model. Several analyses are consistent with path integration as the mechanism by which flies returned to the reward. We conclude that although pheromones are often important in fly navigation and must be carefully controlled for in future experiments, Drosophila may indeed be capable of performing path integration" |
Keywords: | Animals *Drosophila *Cues Reward Insecta Pheromones Drosophila melanogaster Fly Memory Navigation Neuroethology; |
Notes: | "MedlineTitova, Anna V Kau, Benedikt E Tibor, Shir Mach, Jana Vo-Doan, T Thang Wittlinger, Matthias Straw, Andrew D eng STR 1357/6-1/Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/ Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience/ Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg/ England 2023/05/25 J Exp Biol. 2023 Jun 15; 226(12):jeb245289. doi: 10.1242/jeb.245289. Epub 2023 Jun 16" |