0000000000142405
AUTHOR
Natalie Schützler
Worker Personality and Its Association with Spatially Structured Division of Labor
Division of labor is a defining characteristic of social insects and fundamental to their ecological success. Many of the numerous tasks essential for the survival of the colony must be performed at a specific location. Consequently, spatial organization is an integral aspect of division of labor. The mechanisms organizing the spatial distribution of workers, separating inside and outside workers without central control, is an essential, but so far neglected aspect of division of labor. In this study, we investigate the behavioral mechanisms governing the spatial distribution of individual workers and its physiological underpinning in the ant Myrmica rubra. By investigating worker personali…
Tyramine action on motoneuron excitability and adaptable tyramine/octopamine ratios adjust Drosophila locomotion to nutritional state
Adrenergic signaling profoundly modulates animal behavior. For example, the invertebrate counterpart of norepinephrine, octopamine, and its biological precursor and functional antagonist, tyramine, adjust motor behavior to different nutritional states. In Drosophila larvae, food deprivation increases locomotor speed via octopamine-mediated structural plasticity of neuromuscular synapses, whereas tyramine reduces locomotor speed, but the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms remain unknown. We show that tyramine is released into the CNS to reduce motoneuron intrinsic excitability and responses to excitatory cholinergic input, both by tyraminehonoka receptor activation and by downstrea…