Drosophila maintain a consistent navigational goal angle for days to weeks

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Animal Behavior
• Chronobiology

Background:

• Previous studies show Drosophila maintain navigational bearing for minutes to hours.
• The persistence of navigational goals over longer timescales remains unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if Drosophila can maintain a consistent navigational bearing over days to weeks.
• To characterize the neural mechanisms underlying long-term navigation and goal-setting in flies.
• To develop novel technology for studying long-term behaviors in Drosophila.

Main Methods:

• Development of a virtual-reality experimental rig for head-fixed Drosophila.
• Monitoring of individual fly behavior, including walking on a spherical treadmill and circadian rhythms.
• Introduction of a single visual orienting cue and experimental rotations to test goal-angle maintenance.

Main Results:

• Drosophila maintained robust circadian and sleep rhythms for over two weeks in the rig.
• Flies established a preferred direction (goal angle) and walked for hundreds of meters over days.
• Flies corrected for virtual rotations, relied on the visual cue, and reoriented to the goal angle after darkness.

Conclusions:

• Drosophila possess navigation goals with a persistence of days to weeks.
• The developed technology enables long-term behavioral studies and potential for reinforcement learning paradigms in flies.
• This work provides insights into the neural basis of long-term spatial memory and goal-directed navigation.