ArticleThe Journal of experimental biology2023
Displacement experiments provide evidence for path integration in Drosophila.
Article in The Journal of experimental biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Finding a path: local search behavior of Drosophila larvae.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Bumblebees learn to use antennal and tarsal taste to predict the presence of nectar rewards in flowers.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Path integration and optic flow in flying insects: a review of current evidence.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2025Review
- Temporal effects of sugar intake on fly local search and honey bee dance behaviour.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2024Article
- Emergent spatial goals in an integrative model of the insect central complex.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Tracking Sugar-Elicited Local Searching Behavior in Drosophila.Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · 2023Article
- Displacement experiments provide evidence for path integration in Drosophila.The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Like many other animals, insects are capable of returning to previously visited locations using path integration, which is a memory of travelled direction and distance. Recent studies suggest that Drosophila can also use path integration to return to a food reward. However, the existing experimental evidence for path integration in Drosophila has a potential confound: pheromones deposited at the site of reward might enable flies to find previously rewarding locations even without memory. Here, we show that pheromones can indeed cause naïve flies to accumulate where previous flies had been rewarded in a navigation task. Therefore, we designed an experiment to determine if flies can use path integration memory despite potential pheromonal cues by displacing the flies shortly after an optogenetic reward. We found that rewarded flies returned to the location predicted by a memory-based model. Several analyses are consistent with path integration as the mechanism by which flies returned to the reward. We conclude that although pheromones are often important in fly navigation and must be carefully controlled for in future experiments, Drosophila may indeed be capable of performing path integration.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.