Topic: food odor

During foraging, changes in sensory cues such as food odor drive changes in locomotor statistics, shifting animal behavior from dispersal to local search. While cue-evoked changes in locomotor statistics have been observed across species, the neural circuit mechanisms that govern locomotor statistics remain unclear. Here, we explore the neural encoding of locomotor statistics in Drosophila melanogaster. Analysis of walking trajectories following loss of an attractive food odor revealed multiple changes in locomotor statistics relative to baseline: a shift towards lower forward and higher an