SFB 1372: Magnetoreception and navigation in vertebrates: from biophysics to brain and behaviour

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For centuries, humans have been fascinated by migratory animals being able to find their way over thousands of kilometres with a precision unobtainable for unaided human navigators. The central aim of SFB 1372 is to achieve a comprehensive and multidisciplinary understanding of magnetoreception and vertebrate navigation all the way from the biophysical mechanisms to the natural behaviour of navigating animals, covering every step in between. To achieve this, we need to understand how magnetic cues are sensed, how magnetic information reaches the brain for processing, how multisensory navigation-relevant information is integrated in the brain, whether neural correlates of map and compass information exist beyond a lab environment of a few square metres, what the genetic basis of migration is, and how cue manipulations and different sensory strategies affect navigation behaviours and global migration patterns. The proposed SFB is structured into three overlapping and interconnected sections representing the three steps that navigation-relevant signals take within the animal: Signal Detection, Neural Processing, and Navigation Behaviour. The proposed highly multidisciplinary approach is needed to bring about the quantum leap in our understanding of magnetoreception and navigation in vertebrates that we expect to achieve.