FAQs
Why study insects?
Using mammals to study the neural mechanisms that underlie behaviour comes with certain challenges not present in insects and other invertebrates. Insects perform all the same behaviours required for survival and reproduction, but they do it with fewer neurons than any mammal. The human brain contains ~86 billion neurons, whereas insects typically only have a couple hundred thousand. Yet, insects still find mates and food and are arguably the most successful group of animals that exists. Insect neurons are built from the same components and follow the same biophysical laws as any other animal including humans, so understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie their behaviour can be directly applied to any other system. But because the circuits responsible for insect behaviour contain far fewer components, they are often more easily disentangled. Studying how insects cope with the computational demands of producing behaviour with far fewer neurons also helps us learn the most efficient ways to detect, encode, and integrate information while still producing the appropriate output.
How did you get into this field?
I grew up on farm and while picking apples one day, I found a fairy. Years later, I learned she was really a stick insect, but discovering what she was did not lessen my enthusiasm. On the contrary, my curiosity only increased, and it wasn’t just insects I wanted to understand. Early in my research career I worked in zoos and studied behaviour in universally charismatic mammals like primates, bears, and big cats. However, I soon realized that a purely ethological approach had too many limitations to answer my questions about how and why animals behave the ways they do. To gain a more mechanistic understanding of neurophysiology, I joined Dr Wolfgang Stein’s research group at Illinois State University. There, I investigated mechanisms of neuromodulation in a central pattern generating circuit. During this time. I also discovered my love for electrophysiology and sensory systems. However, like pure ethology, studying neural circuits without considering the entire animal and its environment was also too limiting for the questions I hoped to answer. To successfully integrate my interests in morphology, behaviour, and sensory encoding, I needed a relatively simple nervous system, specialized sensory organs, and diverse behaviours. Insects are the ideal system.
What are the applications of your research?
While my driving motivation is simply curiosity and there is an obvious intrinsic value to curiosity-driven research and the breakthroughs it can generate, there are also broader applications for my work. Advancing our understanding of sensorimotor control systems and what is required for specialisation has extensive applicability for implementation in autonomous vehicles. Much of my previous research has been supported by the United States Airforce Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and I plan to continue working closely with the AFOSR and the broader community of applied and basic researchers interested in flight and sensorimotor control. The beauty of using diversity to make comparisons and uncover universal laws, is that the variability we see in nature, is directly constrained by the flexibility and stability of the systems we seek to understand. When defining the limits of sensory systems and behaviour, we need only look to what persists in nature.
Why not use drosophila?
I have used drosophila, and I won’t rule them out for the future. They are often the best choice to answer our questions, but to understand diverse sensory specializations and behaviour, we cannot rely on any one organism. Carl Gans does a far superior job outlining the benefits of studying diverse systems in his paper “All animals are interesting!” and this idea was more recently explained by Clark, Hutchinson, and Garland in “The Inverse Krogh Principle: All Organisms Are Worthy of Study”.
Which insect is the best flier?
The best at what? Every insect’s morphology and behaviour has evolved to be specialized for its own specific requirements and environment. When you consider the goals of an animal, every insect can be regarded as the best flier for its own purposes. Different animals have different constraints that lead to specialization of the sensory structures involved in the type of flight that animal needs. To characterize how and why specialization occurs, we must consider diverse groups with different selective pressures and not just the most agile aerial predators (dragonflies).
What is your favourite insect?
Impossible to decide. All insects are my favourite. except drosophila