Searching for behavioral homologies: Shared generative rules for expansion and narrowing down of the locomotor repertoire in Arthropods and Vertebrates

TL;DR

This study identifies shared behavioral rules governing locomotor expansion and narrowing in arthropods and vertebrates, using immobility as a reference point and analyzing the effects of cocaine on fly behavior.

Contribution

It reveals common generative rules of locomotor behavior across species and proposes a methodology for discovering behavioral homologies.

Findings

Locomotor narrowing down and expansion follow similar rules in flies and vertebrates.

Cocaine induces a transition in fly locomotor behavior that reflects these rules.

Shared neurochemical mechanisms may underlie these behavioral patterns.

Abstract

We use immobility as an origin and reference for the measurement of locomotor behavior; speed, the direction of walking and the direction of facing as the three degrees of freedom shaping fly locomotor behavior, and cocaine as the parameter inducing a progressive transition in and out of immobility. In this way we expose and quantify the generative rules that shape fruit fly locomotor behavior, which consist of a gradual narrowing down of the fly's locomotor freedom of movement during the transition into immobility and a precisely opposite expansion of freedom during the transition from immobility to normal behavior. The same generative rules of narrowing down and expansion apply to vertebrate behavior in a variety of contexts, Recent claims for deep homology between the vertebrate basal ganglia and the arthropod central complex, and neurochemical processes explaining the expansion of locomotor behavior in vertebrates could guide the search for equivalent neurochemical processes that mediate locomotor narrowing down and expansion in arthropods. We argue that a methodology for isolating relevant measures and quantifying generative rules having a potential for discovering candidate behavioral homologies is already available and we specify some of its essential features.