Docile grazer or ferocious predator – how network structure and neuromodulation shape adaptive behavior

Abstract:

Animals must robustly execute behaviors while remaining flexible enough to adapt when circumstances change. Across evolutionary timescales, the neural circuits underlying these behaviors must be modified to meet new ecological challenges and opportunities. Crucially, how nervous systems achieve this balance between robustness, flexibility, and evolvability remains an open question. We study foraging behavior in nematodes to investigate these questions. Specifically, we use a grazing bacteriovore, the model nematode C. elegans, alongside an omnivorous species, P. pacificus, that can prey on other nematodes. Despite their evolutionary divergence of more than 100 million years, the coarse structure of the nervous system remains sufficiently similar, allowing us to compare how conserved neural substrates have been modified during evolution and which structural and neuromodulatory changes contribute to behavioral divergence. We could recently show that changes in noradrenergic signaling underlie the evolution of predatory aggression, demonstrating that flexibility in extrasynaptic modulatory systems can be a powerful way to adapt and evolve novel behavioral strategies without extensive circuit rewiring. Using a latent state model, we find that multiple neuromodulators have distinct and interpretable effects on behavioral repertoire and priorities. Building on this, we now investigate how coordinated changes in both synaptic and neuromodulatory signaling together shape the evolvability of behavior and the emergence of novel behavioral repertoires using behavioral assays, whole-brain functional imaging and computational models. Ultimately, we aim to understand the principles that allow nervous systems to evolve new behaviors from the level of genes to circuits.

Bio:

Dr. James Lightfoot is a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology of Behavior – caesar in Bonn. After obtaining his PhD at the MRC LMS in London, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen. His group explores the evolution of complex behaviors by investigating behavioral diversity across comparative nematode species.

Dr. Monika Scholz leads the Neural Information Flow Group at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology of Behavior – caesar in Bonn. She completed her PhD at the University of Chicago and subsequently held a Dicke Fellowship at Princeton University. Her group uses the foraging behavior of the roundworm C. elegans to research general principles of signal compression, attention and context-dependency in neural systems.

Website: https://www.jlightfootlab.org/ and https://www.scholz-lab.com/

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