TY  - JOUR
A1  - Yilmaz, Ayse
A1  - Aksoy, Volkan
A1  - Camlitepe, Yilmaz
A1  - Giurfa, Martin
T1  - Eye structure, activity rhythms, and visually-driven behavior are tuned to visual niche in ants
JF  - Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
N2  - Insects have evolved physiological adaptations and behavioral strategies that allow them to cope with a broad spectrum of environmental challenges and contribute to their evolutionary success. Visual performance plays a key role in this success. Correlates between life style and eye organization have been reported in various insect species. Yet, if and how visual ecology translates effectively into different visual discrimination and learning capabilities has been less explored. Here we report results from optical and behavioral analyses performed in two sympatric ant species, Formica cunicularia and Camponotus aethiops. We show that the former are diurnal while the latter are cathemeral. Accordingly, F. cunicularia workers present compound eyes with higher resolution, while C. aethiops workers exhibit eyes with lower resolution but higher sensitivity. The discrimination and learning of visual stimuli differs significantly between these species in controlled dual-choice experiments: discrimination learning of small-field visual stimuli is achieved by F. cunicularia but not by C. aethiops, while both species master the discrimination of large-field visual stimuli. Our work thus provides a paradigmatic example about how timing of foraging activities and visual environment match the organization of compound eyes and visually-driven behavior. This correspondence underlines the relevance of an ecological/evolutionary framework for analyses in behavioral neuroscience.
KW  - visual learning
KW  - ant
KW  - activity rhythm
KW  - camponotus aethiops
KW  - formica cunicularia
KW  - compound eye
Y1  - 2014
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-119595
VL  - 8
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Tsai, Yu-Chen
A1  - Grimm, Stefan
A1  - Chao, Ju-Lan
A1  - Wang, Shih-Chin
A1  - Hofmeyer, Kerstin
A1  - Shen, Jie
A1  - Eichinger, Fred
A1  - Michalopoulou, Theoni
A1  - Yao, Chi-Kuang
A1  - Chang, Chih-Hsuan
A1  - Lin, Shih-Han
A1  - Sun, Y. Henry
A1  - Pflugfelder, Gert O.
T1  - Optomotor-blind negatively regulates Drosophila eye development by blocking Jak/STAT signaling
JF  - PLoS ONE
N2  - Organ formation requires a delicate balance of positive and negative regulators. In Drosophila eye development, wingless (wg) is expressed at the lateral margins of the eye disc and serves to block retinal development. The T-box gene optomotor-blind (omb) is expressed in a similar pattern and is regulated by Wg. Omb mediates part of Wg activity in blocking eye development. Omb exerts its function primarily by blocking cell proliferation. These effects occur predominantly in the ventral margin. Our results suggest that the primary effect of Omb is the blocking of Jak/STAT signaling by repressing transcription of upd which encodes the Jak receptor ligand Unpaired.
KW  - morphogenetic furrow progression
KW  - cell fate
KW  - compartment boundary
KW  - reporter gene
KW  - compound eye
KW  - gene expression
KW  - retinal differentiation
KW  - acts downstream
KW  - imaginal disk
KW  - glial cells
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-143577
VL  - 10
IS  - 3
ER  -