Spatial odor discrimination in the hawkmoth, Manduca sexta (L.)

Spatial odor map formation, development, and possible function in a nocturnal insect

An odor plume is composed of fine filamentous structures interspersed by clean air. Various animals use bilateral comparison with paired olfactory organs for detecting spatial and temporal features of the plume. American cockroaches are capable of locating a sex pheromone source with one long antenna spanning 5 cm, so-called unilateral odor sampling. This capability stems from an antennotopic map in which olfactory sensory neurons located proximo-distally in the antenna send axon terminals proximo-distally in a given glomerulus, relative to axonal entry points. Multiple output neurons (projection neurons) utilize this spatial map in the pheromone-receptive glomerulus. Here, I summarize neuronal underpinnings of receptive field formation, development, and how this intraglomerular spatial map can be utilized for odor localization.

First person – Kalyanasundaram Parthasarathy

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Kalyanasundaram Parthasarathy is first author on ‘Spatial odor discrimination in the hawkmoth, Manduca sexta (L.)’, published in BiO. He conducted the research described in this article while a Senior Research Associate in Professor Mark A Willis's lab at the Department of Biology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He is now a Postdoc in the lab of Professor Sanjay P Sane at National Centre for Biological Sciences at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India, investigating how animals use sensory cues to navigate, the related behaviours and the underlying brain function.