Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties

Behavioural responses of animals to volatiles in their environment are generally dependent on context. Most natural odours are mixtures of components that can each induce different behaviours when presented on their own. We have investigated how a complex of two olfactory stimuli is evaluated by Dro...

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Main Authors:	Faucher, Cécile P., Hilker, Monika, de Bruyne, Marien
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3574157/

id	pubmed-3574157
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-35741572013-03-01 Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties Faucher, Cécile P. Hilker, Monika de Bruyne, Marien Research Article Behavioural responses of animals to volatiles in their environment are generally dependent on context. Most natural odours are mixtures of components that can each induce different behaviours when presented on their own. We have investigated how a complex of two olfactory stimuli is evaluated by Drosophila flies in a free-flying two-trap choice assay and how these stimuli are encoded in olfactory receptor neurons. We first observed that volatiles from apple cider vinegar attracted flies while carbon dioxide (CO2) was avoided, confirming their inherent positive and negative values. In contradiction with previous results obtained from walking flies in a four-field olfactometer, in the present assay the addition of CO2 to vinegar increased rather than decreased the attractiveness of vinegar. This effect was female-specific even though males and females responded similarly to CO2 and vinegar on their own. To test whether the female-specific behavioural response to the mixture correlated with a sexual dimorphism at the peripheral level we recorded from olfactory receptor neurons stimulated with vinegar, CO2 and their combination. Responses to vinegar were obtained from three neuron classes, two of them housed with the CO2-responsive neuron in ab1 sensilla. Sensitivity of these neurons to both CO2 and vinegar per se did not differ between males and females and responses from female neurons did not change when CO2 and vinegar were presented simultaneously. We also found that CO2-sensitive neurons are particularly well adapted to respond rapidly to small concentration changes irrespective of background CO2 levels. The ability to encode temporal properties of stimulations differs considerably between CO2- and vinegar-sensitive neurons. These properties may have important implications for in-flight navigation when rapid responses to fragmented odour plumes are crucial to locate odour sources. However, the flies’ sex-specific response to the CO2-vinegar combination and the context-dependent hedonics most likely originate from central rather than peripheral processing. Public Library of Science 2013-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC3574157/ /pubmed/23457557 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0056361 Text en © 2013 Faucher et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Faucher, Cécile P. Hilker, Monika de Bruyne, Marien
spellingShingle	Faucher, Cécile P. Hilker, Monika de Bruyne, Marien Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties
author_facet	Faucher, Cécile P. Hilker, Monika de Bruyne, Marien
author_sort	Faucher, Cécile P.
title	Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties
title_short	Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties
title_full	Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties
title_fullStr	Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties
title_full_unstemmed	Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties
title_sort	interactions of carbon dioxide and food odours in drosophila: olfactory hedonics and sensory neuron properties
description	Behavioural responses of animals to volatiles in their environment are generally dependent on context. Most natural odours are mixtures of components that can each induce different behaviours when presented on their own. We have investigated how a complex of two olfactory stimuli is evaluated by Drosophila flies in a free-flying two-trap choice assay and how these stimuli are encoded in olfactory receptor neurons. We first observed that volatiles from apple cider vinegar attracted flies while carbon dioxide (CO2) was avoided, confirming their inherent positive and negative values. In contradiction with previous results obtained from walking flies in a four-field olfactometer, in the present assay the addition of CO2 to vinegar increased rather than decreased the attractiveness of vinegar. This effect was female-specific even though males and females responded similarly to CO2 and vinegar on their own. To test whether the female-specific behavioural response to the mixture correlated with a sexual dimorphism at the peripheral level we recorded from olfactory receptor neurons stimulated with vinegar, CO2 and their combination. Responses to vinegar were obtained from three neuron classes, two of them housed with the CO2-responsive neuron in ab1 sensilla. Sensitivity of these neurons to both CO2 and vinegar per se did not differ between males and females and responses from female neurons did not change when CO2 and vinegar were presented simultaneously. We also found that CO2-sensitive neurons are particularly well adapted to respond rapidly to small concentration changes irrespective of background CO2 levels. The ability to encode temporal properties of stimulations differs considerably between CO2- and vinegar-sensitive neurons. These properties may have important implications for in-flight navigation when rapid responses to fragmented odour plumes are crucial to locate odour sources. However, the flies’ sex-specific response to the CO2-vinegar combination and the context-dependent hedonics most likely originate from central rather than peripheral processing.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3574157/
_version_	1611955490127872000

Interactions of Carbon Dioxide and Food Odours in Drosophila: Olfactory Hedonics and Sensory Neuron Properties

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