Locust Navigation
Credit: © DARRYL SLEATH" /> Credit: © DARRYL SLEATH Birds, fish, and arthropods are among the animals that can distinguish linearly polarized light. For insects, perceiving the diurnally changing orientation of polarized light - called E-vector analysis - is a way to assist navigation. Stanley Heinze and Uwe Homberg, animal biologists at Philipps University in Germany, looked at locusts and uncovered the neural structure responsible for E-vector analysis - the protocerebral bridge lo
The Scientist Staff
Birds, fish, and arthropods are among the animals that can distinguish linearly polarized light. For insects, perceiving the diurnally changing orientation of polarized light - called E-vector analysis - is a way to assist navigation. Stanley Heinze and Uwe Homberg, animal biologists at Philipps University in Germany, looked at locusts and uncovered the neural structure responsible for E-vector analysis - the protocerebral bridge located in the center of their brains.
Martin Giurfa, a neuroscientist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Toulouse, France writes of the discovery in Faculty of 1000:
"Previous works have reported the existence of isolated neurons responding to E-vector orientation in the brain of locusts and crickets. Now, these authors report that the central complex, a brain area consisting of two subunits, the protocerebral bridge and the central body, presents a topographic representation of E-vector orientations. The protocerebral bridge of locusts...
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