New research uses pioneering tools to show how aggressive female fruit flies' vision is regulated to focus on what's important.
New research uses pioneering tools to show how aggressive female fruit flies' vision is regulated to focus on what's important.
The new research led by Rubin and Schretter satisfies both motivations: it uses pioneering tools developed at Janelia to show how aggressive female fruit flies' vision is regulated to focus on what's important.
Much like when driving on a busy highway, we need to pay attention to the cars around us rather than the scenery, female flies in a state of aggression must pay attention to the nearby fly they are about to fight rather than, say, looking around for food. The team found that the aggression neurons use three distinct mechanisms to regulate vision. One circuit contains excitatory inputs that integrate both specific visual features and the fly's internal state. Another circuit modulates information coming from the fly's optic lobe, and a third mechanism serves as a toggle switch, increasing the transmission of visual information from one subset of neurons and decreasing transmission from another.
For Schretter, the research provides a jumping-off point for further studies of how environmental factors shape behavior. "It shows you that people can be doing the same work, motivated by totally different things, and the outcome can drive them in totally different directions," Rubin says.Catherine E. Schretter, Tom Hindmarsh Sten, Nathan Klapoetke, Mei Shao, Aljoscha Nern, Marisa Dreher, Daniel Bushey, Alice A. Robie, Adam L. Taylor, Kristin Branson, Adriane Otopalik, Vanessa Ruta, Gerald M. Rubin.Fruit flies use vision to head toward interesting things, but also to stay steady during flight.
Insects (Including Butterflies) Animals New Species Mating And Breeding Biology Trees Animal Learning And Intelligence
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