bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory),
Journal Year:
2022,
Volume and Issue:
unknown
Published: July 22, 2022
Pheromones
convey
rich
ethological
information
and
guide
insects’
search
behavior.
Insects
navigating
in
turbulent
environments
are
tasked
with
the
challenge
of
coding
temporal
structure
an
odor
plume,
obliging
recognition
onset
offset
whiffs
odor.
The
mechanisms
that
shape
remain
elusive.
We
designed
a
device
to
deliver
sharp
pheromone
pulses
simultaneously
measured
response
dynamics
from
pheromone-tuned
olfactory
receptor
neurons
(ORNs)
male
moths
Drosophila
.
show
concentration-invariant
stimulus
duration
encoding
is
implemented
moth
ORNs
by
spike
frequency
adaptation
at
two
time
scales.
A
linear-nonlinear
model
fully
captures
underlying
neural
computations
offers
insight
into
their
biophysical
mechanisms.
use
cis
-vaccenyl
acetate
(cVA)
only
for
very
short
distance
communication
not
faced
need
encode
statistics
cVA
plume.
Their
cVA-sensitive
indeed
unable
odor-off
events.
Expression
receptors
indicates
stimulus-offset
independent.
In
ORNs,
breaks
down
(
<
200
ms)
whiffs.
This
physiological
constraint
matches
behavioral
latency
switching
upwind
surge
crosswind
cast
flight
upon
losing
contact
pheromone.