| Flying Drosophila Orient to Sky Polarization. | |
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MedLine Citation:
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PMID: 22177905 Owner: NLM Status: Publisher |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
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Insects maintain a constant bearing across a wide range of spatial scales. Monarch butterflies and locusts traverse continents [1, 2], and foraging bees and ants travel hundreds of meters to return to their nests [1, 3, 4], whereas many other insects fly straight for only a few centimeters before changing direction. Despite this variation in spatial scale, the brain region thought to underlie long-distance navigation is remarkably conserved [5, 6], suggesting that the use of a celestial compass is a general and perhaps ancient capability of insects. Laboratory studies of Drosophila have identified a local search mode in which short, straight segments are interspersed with rapid turns [7, 8]. However, this flight mode is inconsistent with measured gene flow between geographically separated populations [9-11], and individual Drosophila can travel 10 km across desert terrain in a single night [9, 12, 13]-a feat that would be impossible without prolonged periods of straight flight. To directly examine orientation behavior under outdoor conditions, we built a portable flight arena in which a fly viewed the natural sky through a liquid crystal device that could experimentally rotate the polarization angle. Our findings indicate that Drosophila actively orient using the sky's natural polarization pattern. |
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Authors:
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Peter T Weir; Michael H Dickinson |
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Publication Detail:
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Type: JOURNAL ARTICLE Date: 2011-12-14 |
Journal Detail:
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Title: Current biology : CB Volume: - ISSN: 1879-0445 ISO Abbreviation: - Publication Date: 2011 Dec |
Date Detail:
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Created Date: 2011-12-19 Completed Date: - Revised Date: - |
Medline Journal Info:
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Nlm Unique ID: 9107782 Medline TA: Curr Biol Country: - |
Other Details:
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Languages: ENG Pagination: - Citation Subset: - |
Copyright Information:
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Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Affiliation:
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Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. |
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From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
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