Nose Driven Anemotaxis in Mice

Abstract

Navigation is essential for the survival of any animal that has a significant motile phase during its life cycle. Furthermore, the ability to sense the flow of the medium that surrounds them can be found even in animals that are sessile. When animals rely on sensory information from air currents to navigate through space, the behavior is termed anemotaxis. We are yet to completely understand the sensory modalities that govern anemotaxis behavior in the majority of the animal kingdom. In arthropods like Drosophila Melanogaster and Hawk-moth, airflow sensing during flight is achieved by antennae and mechanosensory hairs and is involved in odor plume-driven search behaviors as well. In the case of rodents, studies suggest that vibrissae are mostly used to achieve anemotaxic behavior. Rats are able to detect air flows and follow them using mostly their whiskers as the sensory organ. Air currents always carry volatile molecules it comes in contact with. Rodents use olfactory cues in the search for food, mates, and evasion from predators. Unpublished results from the lab prove that olfactory system can detect and discriminate airflow-related information. In this context, the role of mechanosensation along with chemosensation in aiding olfactory perception remains largely unknown. To start probing this, we planned to study the role of mechanosensation in aiding the taxis towards odor plumes. We undertook a behavior to circuits approach to first understand the way complex airflow stimuli are sensed, associated, and remembered by the mice. Thus it was of high interest to probe anemotaxis shown by mice using a custom-built behavioral apparatus to start dissecting underlying neural mechanisms. The instrument was designed, prototyped, and calibrated. Our results using this instrument prove that mice can detect airflow and show anemotaxic behavior. These results call for further experiments combining odor and airflow information to probe the role of mechanosensation in olfactory perception.