Description
(even numbers)
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are increasingly recognized as key modulators of insect behavior, yet their impact on courtship dynamics remains understudied. Here, we present a deep learning-based behavioral tracking system tailored to detect and quantify mating events in Hermetia illucens (Black Soldier Fly) under controlled experimental conditions. This tool enables high-throughput,...
Food choice is an important driver of speciation and exploration of novel ecological niches. However, we know little about the mechanisms leading to shifts in food preference at the cellular and molecular level. To study this phenomenon, we use the three closely related Drosophila species, D. sechellia, D. simulans and D. melanogaster, which dramatically differ in their feeding habits....
The desert locust Schistocerca gregaria is capable of forming destructive swarms of millions of individuals, causing enormous agricultural and economic damages. The behaviours of this species, such as swarm formation and food search, are largely driven by chemosensory cues from the environment. In insects, including S. gregaria, the role of odorant receptors (ORs) expressed on the antennae...
Different types of classical and operant conditioning experiments have shown that honeybees, as central place foragers, have a vast repertoire of stimuli that they can associate with the rewarding nectar and pollen of a flower. These associations can be unimodal, like the odour or visual component of a blossom, but they can also combine both modalities, and bees learn that only the...
Odor-driven innate behaviors dictate an animal’s survival and reproduction. Drosophila females exhibit genetically driven, stereotyped behaviors in response to the male-produced pheromone 11-cis-Vaccenyl Acetate (cVA). This pheromone innately guides mating, aggregation, and other crucial social behaviors and is conserved across several Drosophila species. Our initial behavior experiments...
Sweet taste sensation plays a critical role in feeding-site selection, dietary evaluation, and appetite regulation in insects. This capability is particularly vital for phloem-feeding insects, as their feeding site lies deep within the leaf and contains extremely high concentrations of sugars, primarily sucrose, that can pose osmoregulatory challenges. The molecular basis of sweet taste...
Social insects live in densely populated colonies, which increases the risk of disease outbreaks. As a result, they have developed collective strategies for disease defense known as ‘social immunity.’ For instance, social insects groom infectious fungal spores from each other’s body surfaces to prevent infection. Social immunity depends on the ability to identify infected conspecifics, but the...
Organisms rely on multi-sensory integration to perform appropriate behaviours. A powerful example of this is the insect leg gustatory system, where knowledge about the quality and the location of a tastant is important. However, we do not currently know how these distinct information streams are integrated. To investigate the possible existence of a dual chemosensory and topographic map, we...
