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Weighting of celestial and terrestrial cues in the monarch butterfly central complex

Tu Anh Thi Nguyen, View ORCID ProfileM. Jerome Beetz, View ORCID ProfileChristine Merlin, View ORCID ProfileKeram Pfeiffer, View ORCID ProfileBasil el Jundi
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.25.477695
Tu Anh Thi Nguyen
1University of Wuerzburg, Biocenter, Zoology II, Würzburg, Germany
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M. Jerome Beetz
1University of Wuerzburg, Biocenter, Zoology II, Würzburg, Germany
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Christine Merlin
2Department of Biology and Center for Biological Clocks Research, Texas A&M, College Station, TX, USA
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Keram Pfeiffer
1University of Wuerzburg, Biocenter, Zoology II, Würzburg, Germany
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Basil el Jundi
1University of Wuerzburg, Biocenter, Zoology II, Würzburg, Germany
3Department of Biology, Animal Physiology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
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  • For correspondence: basil.el-jundi@uni-wuerzburg.de
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Abstract

Monarch butterflies rely on external cues for orientation during their annual long-distance migration from Northern US and Canada to Central Mexico. These external cues can be celestial cues, such as the sun or polarized light, which are processed in the internal compass of the brain, termed the central complex (CX). Previous research typically focused on how individual simulated celestial cues are encoded in the butterfly’s CX. However, in nature, the butterflies perceive several celestial cues at the same time and need to integrate them to effectively use the compound of all cues for orientation. In addition, a recent behavioral study revealed that monarch butterflies can rely on terrestrial cues, such as the panoramic skyline, for orientation and use them in combination with the sun to maintain a directed flight course. How the CX encodes a combination of celestial and terrestrial cues and how they are weighted in the butterfly’s CX is still unknown. Here, we examined how input neurons of the CX, termed TL neurons, combine celestial and terrestrial information. While recording intracellularly from the neurons, we presented a sun stimulus and polarized light to the butterflies as well as a simulated sun and a panoramic scene simultaneously. Our results show that celestial cues are integrated linearly in these cells, while the combination of the sun and a panoramic skyline did not always follow a linear integration of action potential rates. Interestingly, while the weighting between the sun and polarized light was invariant between individual input neurons, it varied strongly when the sun stimulus and the panoramic skyline were presented simultaneously. Taken together, this dynamic weighting between celestial and terrestrial cues may allow the butterflies to flexibly set their cue preference during navigation.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted January 27, 2022.
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Weighting of celestial and terrestrial cues in the monarch butterfly central complex
Tu Anh Thi Nguyen, M. Jerome Beetz, Christine Merlin, Keram Pfeiffer, Basil el Jundi
bioRxiv 2022.01.25.477695; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.25.477695
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Weighting of celestial and terrestrial cues in the monarch butterfly central complex
Tu Anh Thi Nguyen, M. Jerome Beetz, Christine Merlin, Keram Pfeiffer, Basil el Jundi
bioRxiv 2022.01.25.477695; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.25.477695

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