Abstract:
Navigation is essential for the survival of any animal that has a significant motile
phase during its life cycle. Furthermore, the ability to sense the flow of the medium that
surrounds them can be found even in animals that are sessile. When animals rely on
sensory information from air currents to navigate through space, the behavior is termed
anemotaxis. We are yet to completely understand the sensory modalities that govern
anemotaxis behavior in the majority of the animal kingdom. In arthropods like
Drosophila Melanogaster and Hawk-moth, airflow sensing during flight is achieved by
antennae and mechanosensory hairs and is involved in odor plume-driven search
behaviors as well. In the case of rodents, studies suggest that vibrissae are mostly used
to achieve anemotaxic behavior. Rats are able to detect air flows and follow them using
mostly their whiskers as the sensory organ. Air currents always carry volatile molecules
it comes in contact with. Rodents use olfactory cues in the search for food, mates, and
evasion from predators. Unpublished results from the lab prove that olfactory system
can detect and discriminate airflow-related information. In this context, the role of
mechanosensation along with chemosensation in aiding olfactory perception remains
largely unknown. To start probing this, we planned to study the role of
mechanosensation in aiding the taxis towards odor plumes. We undertook a behavior to
circuits approach to first understand the way complex airflow stimuli are sensed,
associated, and remembered by the mice. Thus it was of high interest to probe
anemotaxis shown by mice using a custom-built behavioral apparatus to start dissecting
underlying neural mechanisms. The instrument was designed, prototyped, and
calibrated. Our results using this instrument prove that mice can detect airflow and show
anemotaxic behavior. These results call for further experiments combining odor and
airflow information to probe the role of mechanosensation in olfactory perception.
