Association of visual objects and olfactory cues in Drosophila.

2003

112

SUMMARYAdult fruit flies follow attractive odors associated with food and oviposition sites through widely varied visual landscapes. To examine the interaction between olfactory and visual cues during search behavior, we recorded three-dimensional flight trajectories as individuals explored controlled sensory landscapes. When presented with the source of an attractive odor invisibly embedded in the floor of a 1 m arena, flies spend most of their time hovering back and forth over the source when flying within a randomly textured visual background but fail to localize the source when searching within a uniform white surround. To test whether flies are associating unique features of the visual background with the strength of odor cues, we flew them within arenas containing evenly spaced vertical stripes. Flies readily localized the odor when flying within visual landscapes lacking azimuthal landmarks provided that vertical edges were present. Flies failed to localize odor when flying within a background pattern consisting of horizontal stripes. These results suggest that, whereas flies do not require spatially unique visual patterns to localize an odor source, they do require visual feedback generated by vertical edges. Quantitative shifts in several components of flight behavior accompanied successful odor localization. Flies decrease flight altitude, turn more often and approach visually textured walls of the arena near an odor source. A simple model based on the statistics of flight behavior supports the hypothesis that a subtle influence on these behaviors is sufficient to lead a fly to its food.

Section: Uniform White and Random Checkerboard Backgroundssupporting

confidence: 77%

Odor localization requires visual feedback during free flight inDrosophila melanogaster

Frye

Tarsitano

2003

112

“…Our results in this study, together with previous studies, demonstrate that a wide variety of odor stimuli can elicit flight maneuvers (Budick and Dickinson, 2006;Chow and Frye, 2008;Duistermars et al, 2009a;Duistermars et al, 2009b;Duistermars and Frye, 2008;Frye and Dickinson, 2004;Guo and Gotz, 1997;Wolf and Heisenberg, 1991;Xi et al, 2008). However, in all these cases the odor stimuli were presented at relatively high concentrations, ranging from pure odor to 100-fold diluted.…”

Section: Olfactory Input To a Single Glomerulus Can Trigger Both Turnmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…Several studies have shown that odor stimuli cause tethered Drosophila to increase their wingbeat frequency and amplitude, and/or to modulate their flight direction (Chow and Frye, 2008;Duistermars et al, 2009a;Duistermars et al, 2009b;Duistermars and Frye, 2008;Frye and Dickinson, 2004;Guo and Gotz, 1997;Wolf and Heisenberg, 1991;Xi et al, 2008). In this study, our broad aim was to investigate the relationship between these flight behaviors and primary sensory neuron activity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Olfactory modulation of flight in Drosophila is sensitive, selective and rapid

Bhandawat

Maimon

et al. 2010

“…The flight control system is therefore compacted into relatively few neurons, making flies particularly useful for studying the neurobiology of complex behavior (Frye and Dickinson, 2001). Drosophila melanogaster, in particular, has emerged as a key model system to investigate moleculargenetic, developmental and physiological determinants of olfactory discrimination (Stensmyr et al, 2003;Vosshall, 2000), visual motion detection (Barth et al, 1997;Gibbs et al, 2001;Juusola and Hardie, 2001;Wolf and Heisenberg, 1990), as well as associative learning and memory formation (Connolly et al, 1996;deBelle and Heisenberg, 1994;Guo and Götz, 1997;Pascual and Preat, 2001). Recent advances in targeted genetic manipulations such as the pGAL4 enhancer-trap system (Brand and Perrimon, 1993) have catalyzed the identification of anatomical sites of multimodal integration (Ito et al, 1998), functional roles of central brain structures, and sensorimotor synapses and peripheral sensory pathways involved in gross locomotor performance (Kitamoto, 2001;Strauss, 2002).…”

Section: Free-flight Odor-search Behavior In Drosophilamentioning

confidence: 99%

Motor output reflects the linear superposition of visual and olfactory inputs inDrosophila

Frye

2004

Animals actively seeking food and oviposition sites must integrate feedback from multiple sensory modalities. Here, we examine visual and olfactory sensorimotor interactions in Drosophila. In a tethered-flight simulator, flies modulate wingbeat frequency and amplitude in response to visual and olfactory stimuli. Responses to both cues presented simultaneously are nearly identical to the sum of responses to stimuli presented in isolation for the onset and duration of odor delivery, suggesting independent sensorimotor pathways. Visual feedback does, however, alter the time course of the odor-off response. Based on the physiology of the flight motor system and recent free-flight analyses, we present a hypothetical model to account for the summation or superposition of sensorimotor responses during flight.