Flexibility in a Single Behavioral Variable of Drosophila

The flexibility of behavior is so rich, and its components are so exquisitely interwoven, that one may be well advised to turn to an isolated behavioral module for study. Gill withdrawal inAplysia, the proboscis extension reflex in the honeybee, and lid closure in mammals are such examples. We have chosen yawing, a single component of flight orientation in Drosophila melanogaster, for this approach. A specialty of this preparation is that the behavioral output can be reduced beyond the single module by one further step. It can be studied in tethered animals in which all turns are blocked while the differentially beating wings still provide the momentum. These intended yaw turns are measured by a torque meter to which the fly is hooked. The fly is held horizontally as if cruising at high speed. The head is glued to the thorax. It can bend its abdomen, extend its proboscis, and move its legs but cannot shift its direction of gaze or its orientation in space. Evidently, a fly hardly ever encounters this bizarre situation in the wild. We describe here the flexibility in this single behavioral variable. It provides insights into the relation between classical and operant conditioning, the processing of and interactions between the conditioned visual stimuli, early visual memory, visual pattern recognition, selective attention, and several other experience-dependent properties of visual orientation behavior. We start with a brief summary of visual flight control at the torque meter.

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Spatial odor discrimination in hawkmoth, Manduca sexta (L.)

10.1101/2020.07.08.194126 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

P. Kalyanasundaram ◽

M. A. Willis

Keyword(s):

Spatial Distribution ◽

Manduca Sexta ◽

Flight Control ◽

Spatial Information ◽

Egg Laying ◽

Proboscis Extension Reflex ◽

Flying Insects ◽

Odor Learning ◽

Odor Plumes ◽

Proboscis Extension

AbstractFlying insects track turbulent odor plumes to find mates, food and egg-laying sites. To maintain contact with the plume, insects are thought to adapt their flight control according to the distribution of odor in the plume using the timing of odor onsets and intervals between odor encounters. Although timing cues are important, few studies have addressed whether insects are capable of deriving spatial information about odor distribution from bilateral comparisons between their antennae in flight. The proboscis extension reflex (PER) associative learning protocol, originally developed to study odor learning in honeybees, was modified to show hawkmoths, Manduca sexta, can discriminate between odor stimuli arriving on either antenna. We show moths discriminated the odor arrival side with an accuracy of >70%. The information about spatial distribution of odor stimuli is thus available to moths searching for odor sources, opening the possibility that they use both spatial and temporal odor information.

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Spatial odor discrimination in the hawkmoth, Manduca sexta (L.)

Biology Open ◽

10.1242/bio.058649 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kalyanasundaram Parthasarathy ◽

M. A. Willis

Keyword(s):

Spatial Distribution ◽

Manduca Sexta ◽

Flight Control ◽

Spatial Information ◽

Egg Laying ◽

Proboscis Extension Reflex ◽

Flying Insects ◽

Odor Learning ◽

Odor Plumes ◽

Proboscis Extension

ABSTRACT Flying insects track turbulent odor plumes to find mates, food and egg-laying sites. To maintain contact with the plume, insects are thought to adapt their flight control according to the distribution of odor in the plume using the timing of odor onsets and intervals between odor encounters. Although timing cues are important, few studies have addressed whether insects are capable of deriving spatial information about odor distribution from bilateral comparisons between their antennae in flight. The proboscis extension reflex (PER) associative learning protocol, originally developed to study odor learning in honeybees, was used as a tool to ask if hawkmoths, Manduca sexta, can discriminate between odor stimuli arriving on either antenna. We show moths discriminated the odor arrival side with an accuracy of >70%. Information about spatial distribution of odor stimuli may be available to moths searching for odor sources, opening the possibility that they use both spatial and temporal odor information. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.

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Triggering the proboscis extension reflex (PER) in Rhodnius prolixus

Journal of Insect Physiology ◽

10.1016/j.jinsphys.2021.104249 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 104249

Author(s):

Raquel A. Ferreira ◽

Marcelo G. Lorenzo ◽

Claudio R. Lazzari

Keyword(s):

Rhodnius Prolixus ◽

Proboscis Extension Reflex ◽

Proboscis Extension

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Design of sliding mode flight control system for a flexible aircraft

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part G Journal of Aerospace Engineering ◽

10.1177/09544100211045592 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 095441002110455

Author(s):

Majeed Mohamed ◽

Madhavan Gopakumar

Keyword(s):

Control System ◽

Rigid Body ◽

Flight Control ◽

High Speed ◽

Sliding Mode ◽

Flight Mechanics ◽

Frequency Separation ◽

Flight Control System ◽

Flexible Aircraft ◽

Aircraft Dynamics

The evolution of large transport aircraft is characterized by longer fuselages and larger wingspans, while efforts to decrease the structural weight reduce the structural stiffness. Both effects lead to more flexible aircraft structures with significant aeroelastic coupling between flight mechanics and structural dynamics, especially at high speed, high altitude cruise. The lesser frequency separation between rigid body and flexible modes of flexible aircraft results in a stronger interaction between the flight control system and its structural modes, with higher flexibility effects on aircraft dynamics. Therefore, the design of a flight control law based on the assumption that the aircraft dynamics are rigid is no longer valid for the flexible aircraft. This paper focuses on the design of a flight control system for flexible aircraft described in terms of a rigid body mode and four flexible body modes and whose parameters are assumed to be varying. In this paper, a conditional integral based sliding mode control (SMC) is used for robust tracking control of the pitch angle of the flexible aircraft. The performance of the proposed nonlinear flight control system has been shown through the numerical simulations of the flexible aircraft. Good transient and steady-state performance of a control system are also ensured without suffering from the drawback of control chattering in SMC.

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Olfactory Learning in the Stingless Bee Melipona eburnea Friese (Apidae: Meliponini)

Insects ◽

10.3390/insects10110412 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (11) ◽

pp. 412 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Marisol Amaya-Márquez ◽

Sergio Tusso ◽

Juan Hernández ◽

Juan Darío Jiménez ◽

Harrington Wells ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Unconditioned Stimulus ◽

Stingless Bees ◽

Olfactory Learning ◽

Learning Performance ◽

Taste Receptors ◽

Proboscis Extension Reflex ◽

Adaptive Traits ◽

Proboscis Extension ◽

Cognition And Learning ◽

Plant Pollinator

Olfactory learning and floral scents are co-adaptive traits in the plant–pollinator relationship. However, how scent relates to cognition and learning in the diverse group of Neotropical stingless bees is largely unknown. Here we evaluated the ability of Melipona eburnea to be conditioned to scent using the proboscis extension reflex (PER) protocol. Stingless bees did not show PER while harnessed but were able to be PER conditioned to scent when free-to-move in a mini-cage (fmPER). We evaluated the effect of: 1) unconditioned stimulus (US) reward, and 2) previous scent–reward associations on olfactory learning performance. When using unscented-US, PER-responses were low on day 1, but using scented-US reward the olfactory PER-response increased on day 1. On day 2 PER performance greatly increased in bees that previously had experienced the same odor and reward combination, while bees that experienced a different odor on day 2 showed poor olfactory learning. Bees showed higher olfactory PER conditioning to guava than to mango odor. The effect of the unconditioned stimulus reward was not a significant factor in the model on day 2. This indicates that olfactory learning performance can increase via either taste receptors or accumulated experience with the same odor. Our results have application in agriculture and pollination ecology.

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Visual orientation behavior of gypsy moth larvae to emissive colors

The FASEB Journal ◽

10.1096/fasebj.25.1_supplement.1046.5 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 25 (S1) ◽

Author(s):

Katelyn F Beattie ◽

Jillian L Sanford ◽

Willie Carter ◽

Vonnie DC Shields ◽

Fernando Otolora‐Luna ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Gypsy Moth ◽

Visual Orientation ◽

Orientation Behavior

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Seasonal Variation of Proboscis Extension Reflex Conditioning in the Honey Bee(Apis Mellifera)

Journal of Apicultural Research ◽

10.1080/00218839.1997.11100936 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 108-110 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Stephen Ray ◽

Benjamin Ferneyhough

Keyword(s):

Seasonal Variation ◽

Apis Mellifera ◽

Honey Bee ◽

Proboscis Extension Reflex ◽

Proboscis Extension

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Tilt-Wing Rotorcraft Dynamic Analysis Using Multibody Formulation

18th Design Automation Conference: Volume 2 — Geometric Modeling, Mechanisms, and Mechanical Systems Analysis ◽

10.1115/detc1992-0190 ◽

1992 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick J. O’Heron ◽

Parviz E. Nikravesh ◽

Ara Arabyan ◽

Donald L. Kunz

Keyword(s):

Flight Control ◽

High Speed ◽

Equations Of Motion ◽

Flight Path ◽

Minimal Set ◽

Near Wake ◽

Highly Nonlinear ◽

Nonlinear Transient ◽

Nonlinear Transient Dynamics ◽

Rotor Assembly

Abstract A model is presented that can be used to simulate the highly nonlinear transient dynamics associated with advanced rotorcraft conversion processes. Multibody equations of motion of the fuselage, the tilting wing, and the rotor assembly are derived using a minimal set of coordinates. An enhanced aerodynamics model is employed to account for unsteadiness and nonlinearity in the near-wake aerodynamics, with a dynamic uniform inflow to compute the far-wake aerodynamics, and a flight control system is employed to compute the blade pitch settings that are necessary to achieve a desired flight path. The model is subjected to a demanding flight path simulation to illustrate that it can perform vertical take-off, hover, tilt-wing conversion, and high-speed forward flight maneuvers effectively.

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