ESITO 2025

Session

Olfactory circuits

OC

21 Sept 2025, 09:00

Hotel Comoran (Villasimius, Italy)

70. Behavioral evolution in a complex world: From environment to neural circuits

Philipp Brand (Max Planck Institute for Brain Research)

21/09/2025, 09:00

Oral presentation

From dancing birds to singing flies, animals have evolved an astounding diversity of behaviors to attract and choose mating partners. Guided by innate preferences and aversions, the brain filters complex environments for cues and signals to successfully navigate these reproductive behaviors in appropriate spatial, temporal, and social contexts. To understand how the natural environment shapes...

31. Odorant receptor selectivity in ants

Giacomo Glotzer (The Rockefeller University)

21/09/2025, 09:30

Oral presentation

Among insects, ants possess the largest odorant receptor (OR) repertoires, thought to relate to their reliance on pheromones to mediate colony communication. Yet we still lack a detailed understanding of how recently duplicated OR genes are chosen by neurons, integrated into circuits, and molded by selection to drive behavior. Using the clonal raider ant Ooceraea biroi, a blind ant species...

45. Hunger-state dependent olfactory processing in Drosophila larvae

Hari Pradeep Narayanan (University of Konstanz)

21/09/2025, 09:45

Oral presentation

Animals need to integrate external and internal information to inform navigational decisions during foraging. We showed that fly larvae switch from odor avoidance to odor attraction when food-deprived. This behavioral switch is mediated via increased serotonin release within the larval antennal lobe. We identified further that attractive odors can become more attractive in food-deprived larvae...

46. Sexual pheromone processing in the honey bee brain

Julia Mariette (EGCE, IDEEV, CNRS Gif-sur-Yvette)

21/09/2025, 10:00

Oral presentation

To ensure reproduction, animals must efficiently detect and process intraspecific cues, such as sexual pheromones. In this study, we wonder how the brain of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, processes the unique sex pheromone described in this species, 9-oxo decanoic acid (9-ODA), which triggers male attraction to virgin queens during the mating. Previous work has shown that 9-ODA is detected by...

51. Identification of two odorant receptors tuned to alarm pheromone in the honey bee Apis mellifera

Julie Carcaud (University Paris-Saclay)

21/09/2025, 10:15

Oral presentation

The success of social insect colonies lies in the capacity of all members of the society to behave in a well-organized and context-dependent manner, thanks to elaborate communication among colony members. Honey bees, in particular, use a sophisticated chemical communication system based on the use of a high number of pheromones, most of which have already been identified. How does the social...

30. Mechanosensory processing within the olfactory pathway

Martin Strube-Bloss (ZBUN)

21/09/2025, 11:00

Oral presentation

While the role of the antennal lobe (AL) in processing olfactory signals is well-documented, its function in integrating multiple sensory modalities remains underexplored. In addition to olfactory processing there is increasing evidence in mammals and insects that mechanical stimuli are also processed within the olfactory pathway at an early processing level, indicating a close connection...