We challenged tethered, flying locusts with visual stimuli looming from the side towards one eye in a way that mimics the approach of a predatory bird. Locusts respond to the lateral approach of a looming object with steering movements and a stereotyped, rapid behaviour in which the wingbeat pattern ceases and the wings are swept into a gliding posture. This gliding behaviour may cause the locust to dive. The gliding posture is maintained for 200 ms or more after which flight is resumed with an increased wingbeat frequency or else the wings are folded. A glide begins with a strong burst of activity in the mesothoracic second tergosternal motor neuron (no. 84) on both sides of the locust. Recordings of descending contralateral movement detector (DCMD) activity in a flying locust show that it responds to small (80-mm diameter) looming stimuli during tethered flight, with a prolonged burst of spikes that tracks stimulus approach and reaches peak instantaneous frequencies as, or after, stimulus motion ceases. There is a close match between the visual stimuli that elicit a gliding behaviour and those that are effective at exciting the DCMD neuron. Wing elevation into the gliding posture occurs during a maintained burst of high frequency DCMD spikes.

Role of an identified looming-sensitive neuron in triggering a flying locust's escape. J Neurophysiol 95: 3391-3400, 2006. First published February 1, 2006 doi:10.1152/jn.00024.2006. Flying locusts perform a characteristic gliding dive in response to predatorsized stimuli looming from one side. These visual looming stimuli trigger trains of spikes in the descending contralateral movement detector (DCMD) neuron that increase in frequency as the stimulus gets nearer. Here we provide evidence that high-frequency (Ͼ150 Hz) DCMD spikes are involved in triggering the glide: the DCMD is the only excitatory input to a key gliding motor neuron during a loom; DCMD-mediated EPSPs only summate significantly in this motor neuron when they occur at Ͼ150 Hz; when a looming stimulus ceases approach prematurely, high-frequency DCMD spikes are removed from its response and the occurrence of gliding is reduced; and an axon important for glide triggering descends in the nerve cord contralateral to the eye detecting a looming stimulus, as the DCMD does. DCMD recordings from tethered flying locusts showed that glides follow high-frequency spikes in a DCMD, but analyses could not identify a feature of the DCMD response alone that was reliably associated with glides in all trials. This was because, for a glide to be triggered, the high-frequency spikes must be timed appropriately within the wingbeat cycle to coincide with wing elevation. We interpret this as flight-gating of the DCMD response resulting from rhythmic modulation of the flight motor neuron's membrane potential during flight. This means that the locust's escape behavior can vary in response to the same looming stimulus, meaning that a predator cannot exploit predictability in the locust's collision avoidance behavior.

We investigated the escape jumps that locusts produce in response to approaching objects. Hindleg muscular activity during an escape jump is similar to that during a defensive kick. Locusts can direct their escape jumps up to 50 degrees either side of the direction of their long axis at the time of hindleg flexion, allowing them to consistently jump away from the side towards which an object is approaching. Variation in jump trajectory is achieved by rolling and yawing movements of the body that are controlled by the fore- and mesothoracic legs. During hindleg flexion, a locust flexes the foreleg ipsilateral to its eventual jump trajectory and then extends the contralateral foreleg. These foreleg movements continue throughout co-contraction of the hindleg tibial muscles, pivoting the locust's long axis towards its eventual jump trajectory. However, there are no bilateral differences in the motor programs of the left and right hindlegs that correlate with jump trajectory. Foreleg movements enable a locust to control its jump trajectory independent of the hindleg motor program, allowing a decision on jump trajectory to be made after the hindlegs have been cocked in preparation for a jump.

Palpalis group tsetse flies are the major vectors of human African trypanosomiasis, and visually-attractive targets and traps are important tools for their control. Considerable efforts are underway to optimise these visual baits, and one factor that has been investigated is coloration. Analyses of the link between visual bait coloration and tsetse fly catches have used methods which poorly replicate sensory processing in the fly visual system, but doing so would allow the visual information driving tsetse attraction to these baits to be more fully understood, and the reflectance spectra of candidate visual baits to be more completely analysed. Following methods well established for other species, I reanalyse the numbers of tsetse flies caught at visual baits based upon the calculated photoreceptor excitations elicited by those baits. I do this for large sets of previously published data for Glossina fuscipes fuscipes (Lindh et al. (2012). PLoS Negl Trop Dis 6: e1661), G. palpalis palpalis (Green (1988). Bull Ent Res 78: 591), and G. pallidipes (Green and Flint (1986). Bull Ent Res 76: 409). Tsetse attraction to visual baits in these studies can be explained by a colour opponent mechanism to which the UV-blue photoreceptor R7y contributes positively, and both the green-yellow photoreceptor R8y, and the low-wavelength UV photoreceptor R7p, contribute negatively. A tool for calculating fly photoreceptor excitations is made available with this paper, and this will facilitate a complete and biologically authentic description of visual bait reflectance spectra that can be employed in the search for more efficacious visual baits, or the analysis of future studies of tsetse fly attraction.