CICYTTP   12500
CENTRO DE INVESTIGACION CIENTIFICA Y DE TRANSFERENCIA TECNOLOGICA A LA PRODUCCION
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
capítulos de libros
Título:
Olfaction in Invertebrates: Manduca
Autor/es:
A M DACKS; P G GUERENSTEIN; C E REISENMAN; J P MARTIN; H LEI; J G HILDEBRAND
Libro:
Encyclopedia of Neuroscience
Editorial:
Academic Press
Referencias:
Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2009; p. 49 - 57
Resumen:
Naturalistic experimental approaches are particularly useful in sensory neurobiology. The preferred stimulus for a neuron or a neural circuit can be more easily selected from myriad possible stimuli on the basis of understanding what the animal is likely to experience in its natural environment. Every olfactory system has evolved under selective pressures that have beenimposed by the characteristics of their olfactory environment. The olfactory systems of animals that specialize in a small number of food sources have been under different selective constraints than have the olfactory systems of generalist feeders. Specialists may have to be more sensitive to certain odorants, whereas generalists may have to be able to detect and discriminate a larger range of odors. Likewise, animals in a more dynamic olfactory environment, such as that encountered during flight, have to be able to encode the spatiotemporal patterns of odors suchas those in odor plumes. Adult Manduca must detect discrete, intermittent packets of sex pheromone in order to locate potential mates, and they must evaluate complex blends of low-concentration odorants that vary with increasing distance from their source in order to locate food and appropriate oviposition sites. Neurobiological and neuroethological experimentationwithin the framework of the natural history of the animal fosters understanding of how the different features of an odor are encoded by the olfactory system within the context of the evolutionary constraints exerted upon particular species under study. This approach highlights the basic principles and mechanisms by which olfactory systems encode information about the identity, intensity, and intermittency of natural odors and is essential for understanding the functional basis by which odors are sensed and perceived.