bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.06.896142; this version posted January 7, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. Page 1 of 26 Navigational strategies underlying temporal phototaxis in Drosophila larvae Running title: Temporal phototaxis in Drosophila larvae Maxwell L. Zhu1,2, Kristian J. Herrera2,3, Katrin Vogt1,3, and Armin Bahl2,3,* 1 Department of Physics, Harvard University, 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 2 Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 3 Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA *Correspondence:
[email protected] Keywords: Drosophila larvae, behavior, navigation, phototaxis, modeling bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.06.896142; this version posted January 7, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. Page 2 of 26 Summary statement Using a novel closed-loop behavioral assay, we show that Drosophila larvae can navigate light gradients exclusively using temporal cues. Analyzing and modeling their behavior in detail, we propose that larvae achieve this by accumulating luminance change during runs. bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.06.896142; this version posted January 7, 2020.