Description
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Libi Tamir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)21/09/2025, 17:30Poster presentation
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,...
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Enrico Bertolini (GNOI)21/09/2025, 17:30Poster presentation
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....
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Natalie-Danielle Feige (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Institute of Biology/Zoology, Dept. of Animal physiology)21/09/2025, 17:30Poster presentation
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...
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Athil Althaf Aliyam Veetil Zynudheen (Bielefeld University)21/09/2025, 17:30Poster presentation
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...
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Sayantani Biswas (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany)21/09/2025, 17:30Poster presentation
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...
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Jonathan Bohbot (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)21/09/2025, 17:30Poster presentation
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...
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Sandra Tretter (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany)21/09/2025, 17:30Poster presentation
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...
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Alexi Mery (Francis Crick Institute)21/09/2025, 17:30Poster presentation
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...
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