Fly navigational responses exploit plume-specific odor motion and gradient cues.

Area of Science:

• Animal behavior
• Neuroscience
• Sensory biology

Background:

• Animals rely on odor cues for essential behaviors like foraging and reproduction.
• Environmental conditions create diverse odor plume patterns, complicating navigation.
• Bilateral olfactory sensors enable detection of directional odor cues, including gradient and motion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how animals utilize odor gradient and motion cues for crosswind navigation in odor plumes with varying statistics.
• To determine if these directional cues provide complementary information across different plume environments.

Main Methods:

• Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations of experimentally generated odor plumes.
• Training neural networks to optimize crosswind turning strategies in simulated environments.
• Experimental observation of *Drosophila* fruit fly navigation in controlled smooth and complex odor plumes.

Main Results:

• Odor gradient cues are more informative for crosswind direction in smooth plumes; odor motion cues are more informative in complex plumes.
• Trained neural networks developed distinct structures, prioritizing gradient cues in smooth plumes and motion cues in complex plumes.
• *Drosophila* navigation behavior significantly correlated with gradient cues in smooth plumes and motion cues in complex plumes.

Conclusions:

• Directional odor cues (gradient and motion) are complementary and adaptively used by animals based on plume statistics.
• Animals exploit the environment-specific informativeness of gradient and motion cues for efficient odor-guided navigation.