The animal kingdom contains staggering morphological diversity, but even greater behavioral diversity.

All animals display species-specific ecological behaviors (such as preferentially interacting with members of the same species), and behavior alone can distinguish species that are otherwise morphologically identical - e.g. cricket species that inhabit the same range and are distinguished only by distinct mating songs. Evolution and behavior influence each other - evolution can diversify or purify behavior, behavior determines fitness and population structure.

Research

Data

Automated behavioral classification

Classifications of spontaneous behavior, assigned by human investigators and machine learning algorithms

Neural circuit for handedness

Neural circuit elements (PB-FB-No projection neurons) regulating behavioral diversity

Phototactic choice histories

Individual flies display divergent light preferences over time; color indicates statistical significance

Leg and fly motion

Fictive motion of a fly running on a ball in the LegTracker and the x- and y- coordinates of its legs, over time

Evolutionary phase space

Predicted optimal evolutionary strategies underlying behavioral diversity, varying across climate and geography

Behavioral ethograms

A visual representation of the Markov transition rates between various modes of spontaneous fly behavior - determined by the LegTracker

Variation across species

The white clover weevil and three Drosophila species vary across strain and species in how much phototactic personality they have

Effect of weather on behavior

Predicted fly population dynamics and phototactic behavior dynamics as influenced by real world weather conditions from 2008

Exploration metric

Schematic of a metric to characterize spontaneous exploration of a circular arena

GABAergic circuitry

GABAergic neurons in the fan-shaped body and ellipsoid body, densely packed neural circuits mediating locomotor decision-making

Injury and gait

Leg motion transition matrices and gait schematics before (top) and after (bottom) amputation of a fly's fore leg

Injury and exploration

Exploratory paths, segmented and registered, before (blue) amputation of a leg, immediately after (red), and after a few recovery days (cyan)

Leg proprioceptive organ

Green fluorescent protein expressed in the femur chordotonal organ, a sensory structure encoding proprioceptive feedback

Models

Neurons regulating phototaxis

Neuronal elements implicated in the control of the polarity, plasticity and variability of phototactic responses

Origin of phototactic personality

Developmental timing and genetic regulators of phototactic personality

Spatial decision-making circuit

A model of an azimuthal decision-making circuit in the central complex of the fly brain

Fly life history

Basic fly life history: birth as an egg, metamorphosis, adulthood and egg-laying, various ways of dying

Gait recovery after injury

Stages of exploratory walking behavior following injury and the genes required to transition between these stages

Inventions

Y-maze Array

Measures locomotor handedness and exploratory activity of individual flies, 120 at a time

SlowPhotoBox

Measures the resting shade vs. light light preference of individual flies, 30 at a time

FlyVac Module

A behavioral T-maze built into an circuit board, uses infrared beams to detect when a individual fly chooses to go toward or away from a light source

FlyVac

Coordinates 32 modules to autonomously measure the light preference of individual flies, many times each

LegTracker

An instrument for recording the position of all 6 of a fly's legs, in real time, at 80Hz