Genetic dissection of optomotor behavior in Drosophila melanogaster. Studies on wild-type and the mutant optomotor-blindH31.
In stationary flight Drosophila melanogaster produces yaw torque in response to visual movement stimuli. The residual optomotor yaw torque response of the mutant optomotor-blindH31 (omb), which lacks the horizontal (HS) and vertical (VS) giant fibers in the lobula plate, differs from that of wild-type in several aspects: it is restricted to the frontal visual field, it is only elicited by front-to-back motion and appears to be mediated by a different set of elementary movement detectors (EMDs). Using a single black stripe as motion stimulus the torque response is, even in wild-type flies, dominated by the frontal visual field and by front-to-back motion. We thus propose that Drosophila's optomotor yaw control is organized as two partially parallel subunits. The component still displayed by omb is called "object response"; the component missing in the mutant (which is presumably mediated by the giant HS-cells in the wild-type) is called "large field response". Several properties of the object response are described.
Bausenwein
B
B
Wolf
R
R
Heisenberg
M
M
D000818:Animals; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D005426:Flight, Animal; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement; D009154:Mutation; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D014785:Vision, Ocular; D014794:Visual Fields