Neural circuit mechanisms of adaptation or sensitisation to neonicotinoid insecticides

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"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" - or does stress make you weaker? This PhD project addresses this question in the context of neuronal synaptic plasticity and insecticides. Many insecticides affect the nervous system and cause insects to behave strangely even at low doses, which is a major problem for honeybees and other insect pollinators harmed by agricultural pesticides. Yet the nervous system is remarkably plastic and resilient to changes in activity levels. We recently identified an olfactory circuit in the fruit fly Drosophila that compensates for imbalances in excitatory and inhibitory input, a process known as homeostatic plasticity. This project will take advantage of the powerful genetic toolkit of Drosophila to study whether insect nervous systems can compensate for insecticides that increase synaptic excitation (i.e., "adaptation"). Compensation isn't always helpful though; recent hypotheses about episodic or developmental disorders like epilepsy and autism posit that compensation for one problem may render the nervous system more fragile for other stressors. Therefore, this project also asks whether compensating for sublethal doses of insecticide makes insects unhealthy in other ways ("sensitisation"). In this project, the student will use a range of cutting-edge techniques, including multiphoton imaging, electrophysiology, computational modelling, and behavioural assays.