2. Behavioral Biology TALKS - Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft

Software and data is freely available, with tools for data visualization or integration of
new response profiles, among others. The framework can be used to create a DoOR
to the olfactome of another species as soon as enough data is available.
����157 Kathrin Leupolz
Neuroanatomyofthearcherfish Mauthner-cell
Authors: Kathrin Leupolz 1 , Peter Machnik 1 , Stefan Schuster 1
Affiliation: 1 Department of Animal Physiology, University of Bayreuth
Most teleosts use their Mauthner (M)-cell-associated network to initiate a rapid Ctype
escape start. The M-cell is unique in its characteristics within the vertebrate
central nervous system. It receives incoming sensory information and decides if a Cstart
should be triggered. Hence, there is a rigorous causal connection between the
activity of a particular cell and the onset of a quantifiable behavioural reaction.
Interestingly, archerfish use their M-cell-associated C-start network not only for
driving escapes, but also to initiate their precisely tuned 'predictive start'. In this
behavior hunting archerfish integrate - within a brief interval - information on the
initial motion of a dislodged prey to release a C-start that turns the fish right to the
later point of impact of their ballistically falling prey and pushes it off at a speed
matched to the respective distance. Because inaccurate starts are costly, demands on
not prematurely triggering a start are high. This makes the archerfish M-cell an
interesting target for studying decision-making at the single cell level. As we show,
the two archerfish M-cells are deeply buried inside the Medulla oblongata. Upon
antidromic stimulation they produce an extracellular all-or-none negative field
potential with its maximum in the axon hillock region of the M-cell. This field
potential can be conveniently used to guide an electrode to the M-cell-soma and to
fill the cell. Based on this, we present here, the first neuroanatomical characterisation
of the archerfish M-cell.
����158 Alja Lüdke
Prolonged odor information in the antennal lobe of Drosophila melanogaster
Authors: Alja Lüdke 1 , Kristina Dylla 1 , C. Giovanni Galizia 1 , Paul Szyszka 1
Affiliation: 1 University of Konstanz, Department of Biology – Neurobiology
In classical conditioning, animals learn to associate a neutral stimulus (CS) with a
reinforcing stimulus (US). Associative learning is effective both when CS and US are
overlapping in time (delay conditioning), or when there is a temporal gap between
the stimuli (trace conditioning). In order to associate stimuli which are separated in
time the sensory systems must keep a neural representation of the first stimulus
after its termination (i.e. a stimulus trace). Drosophila and other insects are able to
solve the olfactory trace conditioning task. However, the neural substrate of the
underlying odor trace is not known. To address this issue, we investigated whether
and how olfactory information is kept in the first olfactory brain area, the antennal
lobe, of Drosophila. Using in vivo calcium imaging and the GAL4/UAS system, with
OR83b/Orco and GH146 as driver lines, we selectively measured responses from two
types of olfactory neurons: the olfactory receptor neurons and the projection
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