Flight-induced compass representation in the monarch butterfly heading network
Flight-induced compass representation in the monarch butterfly heading network
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2021.11.009
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发表时间：
2022-01-24
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
El Jundi, Basil
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Beetz, M. Jerome;Kraus, Christian;El Jundi, Basil
对于导航，动物使用坚固的内部罗盘。指南针导航对于帝王蝶等长距离迁徙的动物来说至关重要，帝王蝶每年秋天都会利用太阳导航4000公里以上到达它们的越冬地点。中央复合体的太阳罗盘神经元只在静止的蝴蝶中被记录下来，而在这些神经元中编码动物头部的实验证据仍然缺乏。虽然中枢复合体神经元的活动在许多昆虫中表现出运动依赖性的调制，但这种调制的功能仍未被探索。在这里，我们开发了拴住的帝王蝶的四极管录音，以揭示飞行是如何调节航向表征的。我们发现，在飞行过程中，航向神经元改变了它们的调谐，将中央-复杂网络转变为全球罗盘。这种指南针的特点是处理转向反馈占主导地位，即使在不可靠的视觉场景下也允许稳健的航向表示，这是在很远的距离内保持迁徙航向的理想策略。
For navigation, animals use a robust internal compass. Compass navigation is crucial for long-distance migrating animals like monarch butterflies, which use the sun to navigate over 4,000 km to their overwintering sites every fall. Sun-compass neurons of the central complex have only been recorded in immobile butterflies, and experimental evidence for encoding the animal's heading in these neurons is still missing. Although the activity of central-complex neurons exhibits a locomotor-dependent modulation in many insects, the function of such modulations remains unexplored. Here, we developed tetrode recordings from tethered flying monarch butterflies to reveal how flight modulates heading representation. We found that, during flight, heading-direction neurons change their tuning, transforming the central-complex network to function as a global compass. This compass is characterized by the dominance of processing steering feedback and allows for robust heading representation even under unreliable visual scenarios, an ideal strategy for maintaining a migratory heading over enormous distances.