Topic: female forward velocity

In natural environments, animals must decide when to commit to one option, such as searching for food, or switching to another option, such as escaping a predator. How the nervous system mediates this “stay/switch” decision-making process during naturalistic behavior remains largely unknown. Here, we study stay/switch decisions in fruit flies by presenting optogenetically-driven heat pulses during courtship of a female. We developed a closed-loop stimulation paradigm in which the male receives optogenetic stimulation conditioned on his real-time song production. In response to the stimulus, fl