Summary
An attempt was made to quantify the various sources of variability in the responses of taste cells on the leg of the blowflyCalliphora, and to discover which processes can be held responsible for these sources of variability. Variability increases the proportion of misclassification of response, and therefore seriously hinders attempts to unravel neural coding. Recommendations are formulated for a better experimental procedure.
Ten flies were used, 10 hairs on each left frontal leg were stimulated 16 times, resulting in 1600 spike trains. The sources of variability investigated are: (1) differences between flies (effect of individual fly); (2) differences between taste hairs of the same type (effect of hair topology); (3) the moment of stimulation after amputation of the leg (amputation effect).
Additionally, the unexplained residual variability is quantified.
A 3-way analysis of variance was used. The results provide a strong argument to carry out experiments with one and the same fly: interindividual variability constitutes almost 50% of the total variation (Tables 1a, 2a, b).
It might be advantageous to restrict ourselves to cell responses from a single tarsomere: hair topology constitutes about 6% of the total variation (Tables 1a, 2a, b).
Recordings should be made during a short period — 10 to 30 min — after amputation. Presumably this period can be enhanced by preventing the evaporation of water from the open wound. The reason is that amputated legs show a decrease in response values with time. The contribution to the total variation is more prominent in B-hairs, but remains below 5% (Tables 1a, 2a, b).
Residual variability amounts to about 40% of the total variability ¯f (Tables 1a, 2a, b). Fluctuations take place faster than can be detected with intervals of 10 min. Phenomena such as residual variability, non-responsiveness, delayed responses and irregular responses probably have a common causal factor; changes in geometry of hair tip and lumen are a possible cause of these phenomena.
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van der Molen, J.N., Nederstigt, L.J.A. & Veenman, C.L. Variability in blowfly taste responses. J. Comp. Physiol. 157, 211–221 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01350028
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01350028