WOLF, Mary C.*; MOORE, Paul A.; Bowling Green State University; Bowling Green State University: Neural and behavioral responses to complex odor stimuli using crayfish as a model system

The physical environment in which animals live has a profound impact on the sensory information they receive and their behavioral responses to that information. This is particularly true for chemical cues being transported through moving fluids. Natural habitats provide a complex environment that structures and alters chemical cues such as food, predator and mating pheromones as they move through changing habitats. For example, a natural river bed consists of a mixture of different substrates over which water flows. These substrates exhibit different levels of roughness elements that alter the turbulence structure of the flow. Because the distribution of chemical cues is highly influenced by the turbulence structure of moving fluids, you would expect changes in the available chemical information as an odor plume is transported over different substrates (i.e. habitats) within a river. Changes in the structure of relevant chemical information can overwhelmingly affect behavioral strategies used to orient toward or avoid an odor cue. These behavioral strategies in turn, are mediated by the underlying neural processing of environmental stimuli. In crayfish, orientation behavior has been thought to be particularly influenced by the spatial and temporal fluctuations of turbulent odor plumes, especially by changes in the intermittency, duration and concentration of individual odor filaments. The focus of this compendium of work is to provide a comprehensive investigation into the influence that physical odor plume dynamics in natural habitats has on neural processing and orientation behavior. The overall objective of this collection of investigations is to understand how the physical environment structures complex information and how the nervous system has evolved to process this information to ultimately mediate behaviors.