MCZ Lunchtime Seminar

Sensorimotor Ecology of Butterflies: Stability, Target Tracking, and Adaptive Control

Dr. Jack Supple
Grass Fellow, Marine Biological Laboratory
Postdoctoral Researcher, Imperial College London

Abstract. With fewer than ~10^6 neurons and power consumption in the milliwatt range, flying insects achieve diverse and often extremely agile behaviours, making them ideal systems for investigating high-performance sensorimotor control. Their striking ecological diversity also allows a comparative approach to understanding the generality and limits of different control strategies.

Butterflies are an exciting model system in which the relationship between neuronal specialisation, biomechanics, and behaviour can be studied especially clearly. Their large wings produce characteristically erratic flight, imposing unusual demands on stability, while their highly visual ecology places special importance on colour and polarisation during feeding, navigation, and courtship. Together, these sensory and biomechanical demands make butterflies especially useful for examining sensorimotor specialisation.

My work centres on descending neurons (DNs), the information bottleneck linking the brain to thoracic motor centres. I will discuss how butterfly flight biomechanics are reflected in DN organisation for stability, and how stabilisation and target-tracking DNs possess distinct spectral sensitivities tuned to optic flow and conspecific wing colouration. Finally, I will examine how butterflies adapt their flight control following wing damage, asking how specialised sensorimotor systems retain the flexibility to compensate for altered biomechanics.

Bio: Jack received a BSc in Biochemistry from Imperial College London and a PhD in the neuroethology of predatory flying insects from the University of Cambridge, spending the final year of his doctoral research in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. He then returned to Imperial as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Bioengineering, where he investigates the relationship between stabilisation reflexes and goal-directed behaviour, using butterflies as a model system.