Fisher, Y. E. Flexible navigational computations in the Drosophila central complex. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 73, 102514 (2022). Davis, A. K. Wing color of monarch butterflies Danaus plexippus in Eastern North America across life stages: migrants are “redder” than breeding and overwintering stages. Psyche 2009, 705780 (2009).

Brain, spinal cord and peripheral nervous system anatomy | Kenhub Brain, spinal cord and peripheral nervous system anatomy | Kenhub

Green, J., Vijayan, V., Mussells Pires, P., Adachi, A. & Maimon, G. A neural heading estimate is compared with an internal goal to guide oriented navigation. Nat. Neurosci. 22, 1460–1468 (2019).

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For example, the tracheal tubes through which an insect breathes are untouched, since they are necessary for respiration. These breathing tubes grow in size to fuel the body with more oxygen, as flying is more energetically costly than walking. Another brain structure that helps process sky light and polarized light is 23% larger in the deep forest species than in the forest edges species. Previous research has also shown that the deep forest species responds to lower intensities of light, and it makes sense that species of butterflies living in darker forests would need to be more sensitive to light to see and function in dimmer conditions. Beetz, M. J. & el Jundi, B. The influence of stimulus history on directional coding in the monarch butterfly brain. J. Comp. Physiol. A 209, 663–677 (2023).

Picky Eating and Brain Evolution in Butterflies - Science

Seelig, J. D. & Jayaraman, V. Neural dynamics for landmark orientation and angular path integration. Nature 521, 186–191 (2015). Davis, A. K., Smith, F. M. & Ballew, A. M. A poor substitute for the real thing: captive-reared monarch butterflies are weaker, paler and have less elongated wings than wild migrants. Biol. Lett. 16, 20190922 (2020). Growing wings is exactly what a caterpillar does when it metamorphoses into a butterfly. Imagine being as slow as a snail and then growing up to be able to fly like the birds ( well, not exactly). This transformation is one of the most remarkable feats of nature and has mesmerized poets and scientists alike. Due to the highly conserved nature of the central complex 1, 36, 37, 69, our results give deep insights into the general coding of goal-directed orientation in insects. Our recordings were obtained from non-migratory monarch butterflies that are closely related to the population of migratory monarch butterflies but lost their ability to migrate 70, 71. Thus, in contrast to the single (southward) goal-direction set by the population of migratory monarch butterflies, the non-migratory butterflies maintain any possible goal direction with respect to a virtual sun (menotactic orientation) 48, 53. Because non-migratory monarch butterflies demonstrate individual-specific goal directions 48, 53, we reasoned that their goal directions can be experimentally controlled, which is ideal to investigate the neural coding of goal directions. However, as non-migratory captive-reared monarch butterflies differ behaviorally 70, 71, morphologically 72, 73, 74, and physiologically 73 from migratory monarch butterflies 28, 70, 75, 76, 77, 78, ideas on how the migration behavior is encoded in the monarch butterfly brain should be read with cautious, here.Matheson, A. M. M. et al. A neural circuit for wind-guided olfactory navigation. Nat. Commun. 13, 4613 (2022).