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Differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts
Serotonin is a neurochemical with evolutionarily conserved roles in orchestrating nervous system function and behavioural plasticity. A dramatic example is the rapid transformation of desert locusts from cryptic asocial animals into gregarious crop pests that occurs when drought forces them to accum...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4298206/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25520357 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.2062 |
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author | Rogers, Stephen M. Ott, Swidbert R. |
author_facet | Rogers, Stephen M. Ott, Swidbert R. |
author_sort | Rogers, Stephen M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Serotonin is a neurochemical with evolutionarily conserved roles in orchestrating nervous system function and behavioural plasticity. A dramatic example is the rapid transformation of desert locusts from cryptic asocial animals into gregarious crop pests that occurs when drought forces them to accumulate on dwindling resources, triggering a profound alteration of behaviour within just a few hours. The onset of crowding induces a surge in serotonin within their thoracic ganglia that is sufficient and necessary to induce the switch from solitarious to gregarious behaviour. To identify the neurons responsible, we have analysed how acute exposure to three gregarizing stimuli—crowding, touching the hind legs or seeing and smelling other locusts—and prolonged group living affect the expression of serotonin in individual neurons in the thoracic ganglia. Quantitative analysis of cell body immunofluorescence revealed three classes of neurons with distinct expressional responses. All ganglia contained neurons that responded to multiple gregarizing stimuli with increased expression. A second class showed increased expression only in response to intense visual and olfactory stimuli from conspecifics. Prolonged group living affected a third and entirely different set of neurons, revealing a two-tiered role of the serotonergic system as both initiator and substrate of socially induced plasticity. This demonstrates the critical importance of ontogenetic time for understanding the function of serotonin in the reorganization of behaviour. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4298206 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42982062015-02-07 Differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts Rogers, Stephen M. Ott, Swidbert R. Proc Biol Sci Research Articles Serotonin is a neurochemical with evolutionarily conserved roles in orchestrating nervous system function and behavioural plasticity. A dramatic example is the rapid transformation of desert locusts from cryptic asocial animals into gregarious crop pests that occurs when drought forces them to accumulate on dwindling resources, triggering a profound alteration of behaviour within just a few hours. The onset of crowding induces a surge in serotonin within their thoracic ganglia that is sufficient and necessary to induce the switch from solitarious to gregarious behaviour. To identify the neurons responsible, we have analysed how acute exposure to three gregarizing stimuli—crowding, touching the hind legs or seeing and smelling other locusts—and prolonged group living affect the expression of serotonin in individual neurons in the thoracic ganglia. Quantitative analysis of cell body immunofluorescence revealed three classes of neurons with distinct expressional responses. All ganglia contained neurons that responded to multiple gregarizing stimuli with increased expression. A second class showed increased expression only in response to intense visual and olfactory stimuli from conspecifics. Prolonged group living affected a third and entirely different set of neurons, revealing a two-tiered role of the serotonergic system as both initiator and substrate of socially induced plasticity. This demonstrates the critical importance of ontogenetic time for understanding the function of serotonin in the reorganization of behaviour. The Royal Society 2015-02-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4298206/ /pubmed/25520357 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.2062 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Rogers, Stephen M. Ott, Swidbert R. Differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts |
title | Differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts |
title_full | Differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts |
title_fullStr | Differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts |
title_full_unstemmed | Differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts |
title_short | Differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts |
title_sort | differential activation of serotonergic neurons during short- and long-term gregarization of desert locusts |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4298206/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25520357 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.2062 |
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