The role of vision in plume tracking by flying Drosophila

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The role of vision in plume tracking by flying Drosophila Michael H. Dickinson1* and Floris Van Breugel2 1 University of Washington, Biology, United States 2 Caltech, CDS, United States Finding food is one of the most critical tasks animals perform on a routine basis. Many animals accomplish this by following attractive odor plumes back to their source, which is a complex problem involving the integration of multiple sensory modalities. A common iterative strategy observed in many flying animals is to surge upwind when detecting an odor filament, and then cast crosswind when losing the odor. Both components of this behavior are enigmatic, because animals do not have a direct measure of either their groundspeed or the wind velocity. Nevertheless, animals are able to fly upwind and crosswind across a range of flight velocities, wind speeds, and body orientations. Despite a century of quantitative scientific research on this subject, we still do not fully understand how animals track plumes. To address this question we focused on the fruit fly, Drosophila, because its small size and robust indoor behavior makes it possible to observe long and uninterrupted bouts of odor tracking in the presence of an structured odor plume. Using a novel experimental setup we can estimate a fly's visual and olfactory experience throughout a long flight trajectory, and by automating the data collection we have analyzed over 10,000 flight trajectories under a variety of experimental conditions. By projecting different patterns on the walls of the wind tunnel we can directly manipulate the visual cues available during different components of the behavior. We can also alter mechanosensory and olfactory cues by manipulating the antennae of the flies being tested. Using the large data set we show how flies use vision, olfaction, and wind sensing to follow an attractive odor plume to its source. Within 200 milliseconds of detecting the plume odor, the flies turn upwind (i.e. surge) using visual cues. 400-800 milliseconds after losing the plume, they initiate a crosswind cast, which relies on both visual and antennal cues. This is a robust behavior across a range of wind speeds, indicating that flies must have some ability by which they estimate wind speed and direction. Using tools from nonlinear control theory we have developed a model of how flies accomplish this task. Our results have implications for the underlying neural implementation of odor tracking behavior, as well as more general issues relate to the sensory control of flight control. Acknowledgements This research was supported by grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to MHD, a Hertz Fellowship and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship to FvB. Keywords: Flight control, plume tracking, Control theory, Drosophila melanogaster, Vision Conference: International Conference on Invertebrate Vision, Fjälkinge, Sweden, 1 Aug - 8 Aug, 2013. Presentation Type: Oral presentation preferred Topic: The visual control of flight and locomotion Citation: Dickinson MH and Van Breugel F (2019). The role of vision in plume tracking by flying Drosophila. Front. Physiol. Conference Abstract: International Conference on Invertebrate Vision. doi: 10.3389/conf.fphys.2013.25.00039 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 28 Feb 2013; Published Online: 09 Dec 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. Michael H Dickinson, University of Washington, Biology, Seattle, United States, flyman5@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Michael H Dickinson Floris Van Breugel Google Michael H Dickinson Floris Van Breugel Google Scholar Michael H Dickinson Floris Van Breugel PubMed Michael H Dickinson Floris Van Breugel Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.