Antenna sensor allows hawk moth to move quickly

All insects use vision to control their position in the air while flying, but they also integrate information from other senses. Lund University biologists have now demonstrated how hawk moths use mechanical sensors in their tentacles to control fast flight maneuvers.

When moths need to change direction and maneuver quickly, for example to escape the predator, their eyes are not enough. In contrast, the receptor at the bottom of the antennae of the moth provides the necessary feedback. Researchers at Lund University collaborated with Sanjay Sane of the Tata Basic Research Institute in Bangalore, and now use the Macroglossum stellatarum as their research model to study the role of these antenna sensors in flight control.

In their experiments, the researchers used the moth's natural habit of licking before eating with nectar. They trained moths to visit artificial flowers and drink sucrose solution. Then they moved the flowers laterally at different speeds while shooting their reactions with a high-speed camera to see how much they could follow the movement of the flowers. To understand the role of the antenna sensor, they trimmed the antennae, blocking the sensory input and repeating the same experiment.

“Without the antennas, the moths can still fly, but they can only track slow flower movements, not fast flower movements. When we reconnect the antennas, they work almost as before, and the moths can track faster lateral movements. "Almut Kelber, professor of biology at Lund University, explained. “This is because their antenna function is exactly the same as the gyroscope on the plane. The gyroscope measures the direction of the aircraft, or in this case, measures the moth.”

In terms of speed, the compound eye has no chance to match the feedback of the moth "gyroscope". Converting sensory information into nerve impulses is 1000 times longer for photoreceptors in the eye than for mechanoreceptors. In addition, information from photoreceptors in the eye must be connected by a large number of neurons before the moth's brain reaches the muscles that control the wings. This longer chain of commands adds visual delay compared to mechanical sensing.

“So far, researchers have long believed that hummingbird hawk moths can only navigate with visual information. This situation was previously only known from night moths. We have shown that they also use antennae receptors and show how they interact with Visual sense work together," Almut Kelber said. .

Hawkmoths is not the only insect that uses this “division of labor” between visual and mechanical sensations. It has long been known that flies use mechanical sensory information from their residual hind wings, in addition to the visual information of the eye, a small club-like structure called a reins.

“We found that flies and hawk moths use the same strategy to control their flight, despite very different anatomical prerequisites. They use slow motion vision and gyroscopes for faster movements. Moths do not have halteres, but their Gyroscopes are in their antennas, "now one of the researchers behind the University of Wurzburg's AnnaSt?ckl and research.

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