Many animals show impressive navigation skills that exceed even our own abilities. Amongst them, insects are undoubtedly one of the most capable navigators on earth. We are interested in understanding how these animals – equipped with a brain even smaller than a grain of rice – can exhibit such outstanding navigation abilities.

Using behavioral, anatomical, and electrophysiological experiments, we aim to understand the behavioral and neural principles of the orientation compass of insects and how they are adapted/influenced by the animal’s sensory ecology. How do insects use visual or olfactory cues to maintain a constant heading direction? How do they make robust orientation decisions while navigating?

Our research

A prime example of an impressive navigation skill in insects is the annual migration of monarch butterflies. Each fall, millions of these colorful butterflies migrate over thousands of kilometers from North America to their overwintering habitats in Central Mexico. Even though these animals have never been to Central Mexico before, they are able to find the same trees that their ancestors have been using for overwintering. How these animals are able to exhibit these navigation skills is still poorly understood and is a central research question in our lab.

Methods

• Flight-simulator experiments  
• Immunohistochemistry
• Imaging
• 3D modelling
• Single Cell Recordings
• Tetrode Recordings

Projects

• Studying the relevance of different visual and olfactory cues for the orientation system of insects.
• Studying the anatomical organization of the insect brain.
• Investigating the integration of visual and olfactory information in the insect brain using intracellular, single cell recordings.
• Studying the encoding of navigation information in the insect brain using tetrode recordings in behaving animals.