ArticleCurrent biology : CB2018
Sun Navigation Requires Compass Neurons in Drosophila.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 86 papers.
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Who cites it
86 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cellular and functional dissection of the octopaminergic and tyraminergic system in the Drosophila brain.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Odor tracking in flyingProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
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- Odor tracking in flyingbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The diversity of lepidopteran spatial orientation strategies - neuronal mechanisms and emerging challenges in a changing world.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Review
- From skylight cues to magnetic fields: the toolkit of insect long-distance navigation.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Review
- Article
- Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
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- Finding a path: local search behavior of Drosophila larvae.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Allocentric flocking.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Neural models and algorithms for sensorimotor control of an octopus arm.Biological cybernetics · 2025Article
- Multimodal cue integration and learning in a neural representation of head direction.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- Innate visual attraction before, during and after escape from adverse substrates in carpenter ants.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- A vector-based strategy for olfactory navigation inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Castor is a temporal transcription factor that specifies early born central complex neuron identity.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- Neural circuits for goal-directed navigation across species.Trends in neurosciences · 2024Review
- Continuous integration of heading and goal directions guides steering.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Wind gates olfaction-driven search states in free flight.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
26 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Despite their small brains, insects can navigate over long distances by orienting using visual landmarks [1], skylight polarization [2-9], and sun position [3, 4, 6, 10]. Although Drosophila are not generally renowned for their navigational abilities, mark-and-recapture experiments in Death Valley revealed that they can fly nearly 15 km in a single evening [11]. To accomplish such feats on available energy reserves [12], flies would have to maintain relatively straight headings, relying on celestial cues [13]. Cues such as sun position and polarized light are likely integrated throughout the sensory-motor pathway [14], including the highly conserved central complex [4, 15, 16]. Recently, a group of Drosophila central complex cells (E-PG neurons) have been shown to function as an internal compass [17-19], similar to mammalian head-direction cells [20]. Using an array of genetic tools, we set out to test whether flies can navigate using the sun and to identify the role of E-PG cells in this behavior. Using a flight simulator, we found that Drosophila adopt arbitrary headings with respect to a simulated sun, thus performing menotaxis, and individuals remember their heading preference between successive flights-even over several hours. Imaging experiments performed on flying animals revealed that the E-PG cells track sun stimulus motion. When these neurons are silenced, flies no longer adopt and maintain arbitrary headings relative to the sun stimulus but instead exhibit frontal phototaxis. Thus, without the compass system, flies lose the ability to execute menotaxis and revert to a simpler, reflexive behavior.
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