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The olfactory pathway mediates sheltering behavior of Caribbean spiny lobsters, Panulirus argus, to conspecific urine signals

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Abstract

The “noses” of diverse taxa are organized into different subsystems whose functions are often not well understood. The “nose” of decapod crustaceans is organized into two parallel pathways that originate in different populations of antennular sensilla and project to specific neuropils in the brain—the aesthetasc/olfactory lobe pathway and the non-aesthetasc/lateral antennular neuropil pathway. In this study, we investigated the role of these pathways in mediating shelter selection of Caribbean spiny lobsters, Panulirus argus, in response to conspecific urine signals. We compared the behavior of ablated animals and intact controls. Our results show that control and non-aesthetasc ablated lobsters have a significant overall preference for shelters emanating urine over control shelters. Thus the non-aesthetasc pathway does not play a critical role in shelter selection. In contrast, spiny lobsters with aesthetascs ablated did not show a preference for either shelter, suggesting that the aesthetasc/olfactory pathway is important for processing social odors. Our results show a difference in the function of these dual chemosensory pathways in responding to social cues, with the aesthetasc/olfactory lobe pathway playing a major role. We discuss our results in the context of why the noses of many animals contain multiple parallel chemosensory systems.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Lonny Anderson and the staff of the Florida Keys Marine Lab and Kerry Maxwell and Thomas Matthews of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation for supplying the lobsters, and Jenn Jackson for assistance with the flume. This work was supported by NSF grant IBN-0077474 to CDD, fellowships to AJH from the Brains & Behavior Program at Georgia State University and the NSF IGERT program at Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience under the STC Program of the NSF under Agreement No. IBN-9876754. The flume facility was supported by NSF grant IBN 0321444 to MJW. The experiments comply with the “Principles of animal care”, publication No. 86-23, revised 1985 of the National Institute of Health, and also with current USA laws.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Brains & Behavior Program, and Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, Georgia State University, P. O. Box 4010, Atlanta, GA, 30302-4010, USA

    Amy J. Horner & Charles D. Derby

  2. School of Biology, 310 Ferst Dr., Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0290, USA

    Marc J. Weissburg

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  1. Amy J. Horner
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  2. Marc J. Weissburg
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  3. Charles D. Derby
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Correspondence to Charles D. Derby.

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Horner, A.J., Weissburg, M.J. & Derby, C.D. The olfactory pathway mediates sheltering behavior of Caribbean spiny lobsters, Panulirus argus, to conspecific urine signals. J Comp Physiol A 194, 243–253 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-007-0302-2

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