Danger detection and escape behaviour in wood crickets

Dupuy, Fabienne; Casas, Jérôme; Body, Mélanie; Lazzari, Cláudio R.

doi:10.1016/j.jinsphys.2011.03.020

Cited by 21 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Mulder-Rosi et al (Mulder-Rosi et al, 2010), for example, had only the two cerci and the ganglia-chain intact, but the digestive, reproductive and fat tissues were all removed. As we have discussed in another paper (Dupuy et al, 2011), the stimuli amplitude in those papers are often several orders of magnitude higher than the natural signal. Thus, our preparation, in which the cricket is operated but is otherwise able to move in a somewhat constricted manner, is a real achievement.…”

Section: Nervous Activity In Semi-field Conditions and Response To Namentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Crickets were stimulated using a piston (LAL35 actuator/LACI controller, Cedrat Technologies, Meylan, France) that has been used and tested in previous studies (Dangles et al, 2006b;Dangles et al, 2007;Dupuy et al, 2011). The piston's displacement was precisely controlled using macro commands via hyperterminal software and the RS 232 port of a laptop.…”

Section: Piston Stimulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are at least two possible reasons for this lack of response. First, behavioral experiments (Dangles et al, 2007;Dupuy et al, 2011) have shown that a non-negligible proportion of crickets were escaping only after being touched by the piston [ranging from 67 to 81%, depending on the instar (Dangles et al, 2007)]. In our experiments, we avoided touching the cricket with the piston to prevent damage to the preparation.…”

Section: Nervous Activity In Semi-field Conditions and Response To Namentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the last few years, the wood cricket Nemobius sylvestris (Bosc 1792) has been the subject of studies focusing on its ecology (Dangles et al, 2006a), its escape behavior (Dupuy et al, 2011), the neuroanatomy of the cercal sensory system (Insausti et al, 2008;Insausti et al, 2011), the anatomy of cerci (Dangles et al, 2005), mathematical modeling of the movement of mechanoreceptive hairs (Magal et al, 2006) and air movements around hairs on cerci (Steinmann et al, 2006). Nemobius sylvestris crickets live in the litter of forests, an easily accessible environment for field experiments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Responses of cricket cercal interneurons to realistic naturalistic stimuli in the field

Dupuy

Steinmann

Pierre

et al. 2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYThe ability of the insect cercal system to detect approaching predators has been studied extensively in the laboratory and in the field. Some previous studies have assessed the extent to which sensory noise affects the operational characteristics of the cercal system, but these studies have only been carried out in laboratory settings using white noise stimuli of unrealistic nature. Using a piston mimicking the natural airflow of an approaching predator, we recorded the neural activity through the abdominal connectives from the terminal abdominal ganglion of freely moving wood crickets (Nemobius sylvestris) in a semi-field situation. A cluster analysis of spike amplitudes revealed six clusters, or ʻunitsʼ, corresponding to six different subsets of cercal interneurons. No spontaneous activity was recorded for the units of larger amplitude, reinforcing the idea they correspond to the largest giant interneurons. Many of the cercal units are already activated by background noise, sometimes only weakly, and the approach of a predator is signaled by an increase in their activity, in particular for the larger-amplitude units. A scaling law predicts that the cumulative number of spikes is a function of the velocity of the flow perceived at the rear of the cricket, including a multiplicative factor that increases linearly with piston velocity. We discuss the implications of this finding in terms of how the cricket might infer the imminence and nature of a predatory attack. Supplementary material available online at

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Section: Nervous Activity In Semi-field Conditions and Response To Namentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Piston Stimulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Nervous Activity In Semi-field Conditions and Response To Namentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Responses of cricket cercal interneurons to realistic naturalistic stimuli in the field

Dupuy

Steinmann

Pierre

et al. 2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…These behaviors have been mostly studied in the cockroach P. americana and several cricket species. In predator detection, wind directed at the cerci initiates a two-component terrestrial escape response consisting of a rapid initial turn away from the wind source followed by more variable running and/or, in the case of crickets, jumping (Baba and Shimozawa, 1997; Camhi and Tom, 1978; Dupuy et al, 2011; Tauber and Camhi, 1995). WSIs located in the VIT initiate the turn response (Westin et al, 1977) while WSIs located in the DIT are thought to be involved in the more variable running/jumping phase (Camhi and Nolen, 1981; Ritzmann and Pollack, 1981).…”

Section: 0 Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural responses from the wind-sensitive interneuron population in four cockroach species

McGorry

Newman

Triblehorn

2014

Journal of Insect Physiology

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The wind-sensitive insect cercal sensory system is involved in important behaviors including predator detection and initiating terrestrial escape responses as well as flight maintenance. However, not all insects possessing a cercal system exhibit these behaviors. In cockroaches, wind evokes strong terrestrial escape responses in Periplaneta americana and Blattella germanica, but only weak escape responses in Blaberus craniifer and no escape responses in Gromphadorhina portentosa. Both P. americana and Blab. craniifer possesses pink flight muscles correlated with flight ability while Blat. germanica possesses white flight muscles that cannot support flight and G. portentosa lacks wings. These different behavioral combinations could correlate with differences in sensory processing of wind information by the cercal system. In this study, we focused on the wind-sensitive interneurons (WSIs) since they provide input to the premotor/motor neurons that influence terrestrial escape and flight behavior. Using extracellular recordings, we characterized the responses from the WSI population by generating stimulus-response (S-R) curves and examining spike firing rates. Using cluster analysis, we also examined the activity of individual units (four per species, though not necessarily homologous) comprising the population response in each species. Our main results were: 1) all four species possessed ascending WSIs in the abdominal connectives; 2) wind elicited the weakest WSI responses (lowest spike counts and spike rates) in G. portentosa; 3) wind elicited WSI responses in Blab. craniifer that were greater than P. americana or Blat. germanica; 4) the activity of four individual units comprising the WSI population response in each species was similar across species.

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Evolutionary and Ecological Functions of Dynamic Perceptions of Looming Danger

Riskind

Rector

2018

Looming Vulnerability

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Danger detection and escape behaviour in wood crickets

Cited by 21 publications

References 36 publications

Responses of cricket cercal interneurons to realistic naturalistic stimuli in the field

Responses of cricket cercal interneurons to realistic naturalistic stimuli in the field

Neural responses from the wind-sensitive interneuron population in four cockroach species

Evolutionary and Ecological Functions of Dynamic Perceptions of Looming Danger

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