Project:
An Insect Autopilot: how Locust Ocelli Work
Project Leader(s): Dr Peter Simmons
Partners: Rob de Ruyter van Steveninck , Gerd Leitinger
Many adult insects, including locusts, posses three single-lensed eyes called ocelli. Unlike the compound eyes, ocelli do not form images, but many features of their design suggests that one behavioural role is to help stabilize flight attitude with reference to the visual horizon. Signals from the ocelli travel along the largest neurons that feed information into the brain. Not only does this mean ocelli must be quite important to the insect, but it provides opportunities to study in details the ways that electrical signals are processed in a simple visual system and used to control behaviour. By making electrophysiological 
recordings from pairs of connected neurons, we have made fundamental discoveries about how different types of synapses work, including quantifying the information capacities of neurons and synapses. We also study details of the ultrastructure of the synapses. Current experiments are aimed at finding out how particular ocellar neurons are used to control the flight behaviour.
Collaborators:
Rob de Ruyter van Steveninck, University of Indiana Bloomington, USA http://biocomplexity.indiana.edu/research/info/deruyter.php
Gerd Leitinger, Medical University Graz, Austria
http://www.meduni-graz.at/zellbiologie-histologie-embryologie/index/staff/cv_leitinger-de.html
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Dr Peter Simmons
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