Flying Drosophila Orient to Sky Polarization

Abstract

Insects maintain a constant bearing across a wide range of spatial scales. Monarch butterflies and locusts traverse continents [[1] and [2]], and foraging bees and ants travel hundreds of meters to return to their nests [[1], [3] and [4]], whereas many other insects fly straight for only a few centimeters before changing direction. Despite this variation in spatial scale, the brain region thought to underlie long-distance navigation is remarkably conserved [[5] and [6]], suggesting that the use of a celestial compass is a general and perhaps ancient capability of insects. Laboratory studies of Drosophila have identified a local search mode in which short, straight segments are interspersed with rapid turns [[7] and [8]]. However, this flight mode is inconsistent with measured gene flow between geographically separated populations [[9], [10] and [11]], and individual Drosophila can travel 10 km across desert terrain in a single night [[9], [12] and [13]]—a feat that would be impossible without prolonged periods of straight flight. To directly examine orientation behavior under outdoor conditions, we built a portable flight arena in which a fly viewed the natural sky through a liquid crystal device that could experimentally rotate the polarization angle. Our findings indicate that Drosophila actively orient using the sky's natural polarization pattern.

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