Meeting Abstract

85.3  Monday, Jan. 6 10:45  The antennal positioning response of flying honeybees ROY, T**; SANE, S.P; National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India; National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India tarunir@ncbs.res.in

Antennal movements of insects are important for optimal acquisition of the sensory cues that they sample during specific behaviours. Although these behaviours are initiated by neural commands from higher centres, they are also influenced by inputs from multiple sensors. Here, we show that both mechanosensory and visual inputs modulate antennal positioning in flying honey bees. Freely flying honeybees control their antennal position relative to their air speed. As in most insects, the gross changes in antennal position are transduced by sets of mechanosensory hair fields on the basal segments of the antennae. In addition, experiments in which flying honeybees are presented with optic flow indicate that antennal position is also a function of bilateral visual input. Thus, the antennal positioning behaviour in honeybees uses multimodal cues.