Integrating behavior with neurobiology: Odor-mediated moth flight and olfactory discrimination by glomerular arrays

Abstract

Animals are equipped with a variety of sensory systems that allow them to extract information from the environments they inhabit. The ability to detect the chemical environment is probably the most ancient sense. The sense of smell can provide important details about the habitat because chemical signals emitted by both beneficial and potentially harmful sources can be detected and appropriate behavior initiated without relying upon input from other sensory modalities. Even though olfactory communication can be slow compared to other sensory modalities such as vision and sound, it is sometimes very reliable and stable (e.g. trail or territory marking) and in other circumstances may be much more ephemeral (e.g. odors released only during specific periods of the day or night). Thus, olfactory cues can be manipulated over time and spatial scales that other sensory modalities cannot, and this is perhaps why we find an abundance of olfactory communication in the animal world. For adult moths, olfactory signals are a vital source of information that modulate many aspects of their behavior. In these animals, an appreciation of the features of odors coupled with behavioral experimentation has enhanced our understanding of the neurobiology of olfactory processing.