A framework for constructing insect steering circuits

Abstract

Insects perform a variety of goal-directed navigation behaviours, each of which requires a comparison between their current and desired heading direction. Recent work has uncovered such a steering circuit in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. We used the available neuroanatomical and physiological descriptions to derive six general rules which can be used to construct a class of steering circuits which operate in the same way. These rules are surprisingly permissive, suggesting that across insect species, steering circuits may have differing wiring while remaining functionally identical. We simulate an extreme example and demonstrate that it is functionally identical to the reported fruit fly circuit. Further, we argue that the principled approach we apply here could be applied more generally in performing comparative analyses across different insect species.