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

Biology Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
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.

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

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.

scholarly journals Flexibility in a Single Behavioral Variable of Drosophila

2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Martin Heisenberg ◽  
Reinhard Wolf ◽  
Björn Brembs
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Recognition ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Visual Orientation ◽  
Orientation Behavior ◽  
Proboscis Extension Reflex ◽  
Behavioral Variable ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Proboscis Extension

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.

Triggering the proboscis extension reflex (PER) in Rhodnius prolixus

2021 ◽  
pp. 104249
Author(s):  
Raquel A. Ferreira ◽  
Marcelo G. Lorenzo ◽  
Claudio R. Lazzari
Keyword(s):  
Rhodnius Prolixus ◽  
Proboscis Extension Reflex ◽  
Proboscis Extension

scholarly journals The Role of Spatio-Temporal Information to Govern the COVID-19 Pandemic: A European Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 166
Author(s):  
Hartmut Müller ◽  
Marije Louwsma
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
National Level ◽  
Temporal Information ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Heavy Burden ◽  
Spatio Temporal

The Covid-19 pandemic put a heavy burden on member states in the European Union. To govern the pandemic, having access to reliable geo-information is key for monitoring the spatial distribution of the outbreak over time. This study aims to analyze the role of spatio-temporal information in governing the pandemic in the European Union and its member states. The European Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) system and selected national dashboards from member states were assessed to analyze which spatio-temporal information was used, how the information was visualized and whether this changed over the course of the pandemic. Initially, member states focused on their own jurisdiction by creating national dashboards to monitor the pandemic. Information between member states was not aligned. Producing reliable data and timeliness reporting was problematic, just like selecting indictors to monitor the spatial distribution and intensity of the outbreak. Over the course of the pandemic, with more knowledge about the virus and its characteristics, interventions of member states to govern the outbreak were better aligned at the European level. However, further integration and alignment of public health data, statistical data and spatio-temporal data could provide even better information for governments and actors involved in managing the outbreak, both at national and supra-national level. The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) initiative and the NUTS system provide a framework to guide future integration and extension of existing systems.

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

Insects ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 412 ◽  
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.

scholarly journals Study on the effect of rainfall spatial variability on runoff modelling

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Zhang ◽  
Dawei Han ◽  
Yang Song ◽  
Qiang Dai
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Spatial Variability ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Moran’S I ◽  
Image Size ◽  
Moran's I ◽  
Rainfall Events ◽  
Lumped Model ◽  
Distributed Models

Abstract Rainfall spatial variability was assessed to explore its influence on runoff modelling. Image size, coefficient of variation (Cv) and Moran's I were chosen to assess for rainfall spatial variability. The smaller the image size after compression, the less complex is the rainfall spatial variability. The results showed that due to the drawing procedure and varied compression methods, a large uncertainty exists for using image size to describe rainfall spatial variability. Cv quantifies the variability between different rainfall values without considering rainfall spatial distribution and Moran's I describes the spatial autocorrelation between gauges rather than the values. As both rainfall values and spatial distribution have an influence on runoff modelling, the combination of Cv and Moran's I was further explored. The results showed that the combination of Cv and Moran's I is reliable to describe rainfall spatial variability. Furthermore, with the increase of rainfall spatial variability, the hydrological model performance decreases. Moreover, it is difficult for a lumped model to cope with rainfall events assigned with complex rainfall spatial variability since spatial information is not taken into consideration (i.e. the VIC model used in this study). Therefore, it is recommended to apply distributed models that can deal with more spatial input information.

scholarly journals Vehicle Spatial Distribution and 3D Trajectory Extraction Algorithm in a Cross-Camera Traffic Scene

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (22) ◽  
pp. 6517
Author(s):  
Xinyao Tang ◽  
Huansheng Song ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Yanni Yang
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Extraction Methods ◽  
Geometric Constraints ◽  
Panoramic Image ◽  
Trajectory Data ◽  
Comparison Algorithms ◽  
Bounding Boxes

The three-dimensional trajectory data of vehicles have important practical meaning for traffic behavior analysis. To solve the problems of narrow visual angle in single-camera scenes and lack of continuous trajectories in 3D space by current cross-camera trajectory extraction methods, we propose an algorithm of vehicle spatial distribution and 3D trajectory extraction in this paper. First, a panoramic image of a road with spatial information is generated based on camera calibration, which is used to convert cross-camera perspectives into 3D physical space. Then, we choose YOLOv4 to obtain 2D bounding boxes of vehicles in cross-camera scenes. Based on the above information, 3D bounding boxes around vehicles are built with geometric constraints which are used to obtain projection centroids of vehicles. Finally, by calculating the spatial distribution of projection centroids in the panoramic image, 3D trajectories of vehicles are extracted. The experimental results indicate that our algorithm can effectively complete vehicle spatial distribution and 3D trajectory extraction in various traffic scenes, which outperforms other comparison algorithms.

Skeleton Network Extraction and Analysis on Bicycle Sharing Networks

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-167
Author(s):  
Kanokwan Malang ◽  
Shuliang Wang ◽  
Yuanyuan Lv ◽  
Aniwat Phaphuangwittayakul
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Extraction Method ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Spatial Clustering ◽  
Transportation Networks ◽  
Network Size ◽  
Network Characteristics ◽  
Spatial Features

Skeleton network extraction has been adopted unevenly in transportation networks whose nodes are always represented as spatial units. In this article, the TPks skeleton network extraction method is proposed and applied to bicycle sharing networks. The method aims to reduce the network size while preserving key topologies and spatial features. The authors quantified the importance of nodes by an improved topology potential algorithm. The spatial clustering allows to detect high traffic concentrations and allocate the nodes of each cluster according to their spatial distribution. Then, the skeleton network is constructed by aggregating the most important indicated skeleton nodes. The authors examine the skeleton network characteristics and different spatial information using the original networks as a benchmark. The results show that the skeleton networks can preserve the topological and spatial information similar to the original networks while reducing their size and complexity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document