Odor Landscapes in Turbulent Environments
Antonio Celani, Emmanuel Villermaux, Massimo Vergassola

TL;DR
This paper develops a Lagrangian model to predict the statistical properties of pheromone detection signals in turbulent environments, aiding understanding of moth olfactory behavior and informing technological applications.
Contribution
It introduces a novel theoretical framework for quantifying odor detection statistics in turbulent flows, validated by simulations and experiments.
Findings
Explicit probability distributions for odor detection intensity and duration.
Validation of predictions with numerical, laboratory, and field data.
Insights into the information content of odor signals for moth navigation.
Abstract
The olfactory system of male moths is exquisitely sensitive to pheromones emitted by females and transported in the environment by atmospheric turbulence. Moths respond to minute amounts of pheromones and their behavior is sensitive to the fine-scale structure of turbulent plumes where pheromone concentration is detectible. The signal of pheromone whiffs is qualitatively known to be intermittent, yet quantitative characterization of its statistical properties is lacking. This challenging fluid dynamics problem is also relevant for entomology, neurobiology and the technological design of olfactory stimulators aimed at reproducing physiological odor signals in well-controlled laboratory conditions. Here, we develop a Lagrangian approach to the transport of pheromones by turbulent flows and exploit it to predict the statistics of odor detection during olfactory searches. The theory yields…
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