TY - JOUR
T1 - Deciphering the role of a coleopteran steering muscle via free flight stimulation
AU - Sato, Hirotaka
AU - Vo Doan, Tat Thang
AU - Kolev, Svetoslav
AU - Huynh, Ngoc Anh
AU - Zhang, Chao
AU - Massey, Travis L.
AU - Van Kleef, Joshua
AU - Ikeda, Kazuo
AU - Abbeel, Pieter
AU - Maharbiz, Michel M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/3/16
Y1 - 2015/3/16
N2 - Testing hypotheses of neuromuscular function during locomotion ideally requires the ability to record cellular responses and to stimulate the cells being investigated to observe downstream behaviors [1]. The inability to stimulate in free flight has been a long-standing hurdle for insect flight studies. The miniaturization of computation and communication technologies has delivered ultra-small, radio-enabled neuromuscular recorders and stimulators for untethered insects [2-8]. Published stimulation targets include the areas in brain potentially responsible for pattern generation in locomotion [5], the nerve chord for abdominal flexion [9], antennal muscles [2, 10], and the flight muscles (or their excitatory junctions) [7, 11-13]. However, neither fine nor graded control of turning has been demonstrated in free flight, and responses to the stimulation vary widely [2, 5, 7, 9]. Technological limitations have precluded hypotheses of function validation requiring exogenous stimulation during flight. We investigated the role of a muscle involved in wing articulation during flight in a coleopteran. We set out to identify muscles whose stimulation produced a graded turning in free flight, a feat that would enable fine steering control not previously demonstrated. We anticipated that gradation might arise either as a function of the phase of muscle firing relative to the wing stroke (as in the classic fly b1 muscle [14, 15] or the dorsal longitudinal and ventral muscles of moth [16]), or due to regulated tonic control, in which phase-independent summation of twitch responses produces varying amounts of force delivered to the wing linkages [15, 17, 18].
AB - Testing hypotheses of neuromuscular function during locomotion ideally requires the ability to record cellular responses and to stimulate the cells being investigated to observe downstream behaviors [1]. The inability to stimulate in free flight has been a long-standing hurdle for insect flight studies. The miniaturization of computation and communication technologies has delivered ultra-small, radio-enabled neuromuscular recorders and stimulators for untethered insects [2-8]. Published stimulation targets include the areas in brain potentially responsible for pattern generation in locomotion [5], the nerve chord for abdominal flexion [9], antennal muscles [2, 10], and the flight muscles (or their excitatory junctions) [7, 11-13]. However, neither fine nor graded control of turning has been demonstrated in free flight, and responses to the stimulation vary widely [2, 5, 7, 9]. Technological limitations have precluded hypotheses of function validation requiring exogenous stimulation during flight. We investigated the role of a muscle involved in wing articulation during flight in a coleopteran. We set out to identify muscles whose stimulation produced a graded turning in free flight, a feat that would enable fine steering control not previously demonstrated. We anticipated that gradation might arise either as a function of the phase of muscle firing relative to the wing stroke (as in the classic fly b1 muscle [14, 15] or the dorsal longitudinal and ventral muscles of moth [16]), or due to regulated tonic control, in which phase-independent summation of twitch responses produces varying amounts of force delivered to the wing linkages [15, 17, 18].
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84926351148&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.051
DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.051
M3 - Article
SN - 0960-9822
VL - 25
SP - 798
EP - 803
JO - Current Biology
JF - Current Biology
IS - 6
ER -