Abstract
Although crickets move their front wings for sound production, the abdominal ganglia house the network of the singing central pattern generator. We compared the effects of specific lesions to the connectives of the abdominal ganglion chain on calling song activity in four different species of crickets, generating very different pulse patterns in their calling songs. In all species, singing activity was abolished after the connectives between the metathoracic ganglion complex and the first abdominal ganglion A3 were severed. The song structure was lost and males generated only single sound pulses when connectives between A3 and A4 were cut. Severing connectives between A4 and A5 had no effect in the trilling species, it led to an extension of chirps in a chirping species and to a loss of the phrase structure in two Teleogryllus species. Cutting the connectives between A5 and A6 caused no or minor changes in singing activity. In spite of the species-specific pulse patterns of calling songs, our data indicate a conserved organisation of the calling song motor pattern generating network. The generation of pulses is controlled by ganglia A3 and A4 while A4 and A5 provide the timing information for the chirp and/or phrase structure of the song.
Highlights
Rhythmic movements are characteristic for behaviours like swimming, crawling, flying, walking, ventilation or sound production in a variety of invertebrates and vertebrates
Recent lesion studies (Schöneich and Hedwig 2011; Jacob and Hedwig 2016) revealed that the singing-central pattern generators (CPGs) in the field cricket G. bimaculatus is organized along the abdominal nerve cord and not located in the thoracic ganglia as previously suggested (Huber 1960, 1963; Hennig and Otto 1996)
This outcome is in line with the results of acute T3-A3 connective severing experiments in G. bimaculatus males singing due to brain stimulation (Schöneich and Hedwig 2011) and with long-term lesion experiments (Jacob and Hedwig 2016)
Summary
Rhythmic movements are characteristic for behaviours like swimming, crawling, flying, walking, ventilation or sound production in a variety of invertebrates and vertebrates. The organization of the pattern generators is in the focus of neuroscience, aiming to unravel the general principles of their function (Selverston 1980, 2010; Marder and Bucher 2001; Bucher et al 2015). Central questions in these studies are: Where are the CPG networks located within the CNS and how are they organized at a systems and cellular level?
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