{"id":76,"date":"2015-09-15T10:48:15","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T10:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/?p=76"},"modified":"2015-10-09T10:31:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T10:31:48","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2015\/09\/15\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mothplume.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-206\" src=\"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mothplume.jpg\" alt=\"mothplume\" width=\"1356\" height=\"694\" srcset=\"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mothplume.jpg 1356w, http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mothplume-300x154.jpg 300w, http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mothplume-1024x524.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1356px) 100vw, 1356px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Animals as diverse as mammals, birds and insects use odors to find mates, hosts and food sources. This is a difficult task because natural odors occur in complex turbulent air plumes and the relevant target odors intermingle with plumes of multiple background odors stemming from a variety of natural and anthropogenic sources (vegetation, exhaust fumes, etc.).<\/p>\n<p>It is essential for animals to be able to separate target from background odors. We hypothesize that animals may use temporal information from natural odor fluctuations to achieve odor-background segregation, as odorants from the same source fluctuate together in synchrony, while odorants from different sources do not.<\/p>\n<p>Behavioral studies have shown that insects can indeed use fast temporal stimulus cues but it is not yet known how the brain accomplishes the difficult task of odor-background segregation. In this project we will investigate the neural mechanisms of odor-background segregation using the honey bee as model organism.<\/p>\n<p>Honey bees visit many different flower species for nectar and pollen. However, over a series of trips an individual forager bee only visits a single flower species on which it has found nectar previously, a phenomenon called floral constancy. To localizes the target flowers in a natural environment bees use several cues, including odors. As the bee is challenged by multiple background odors in every flower patch, bees must be equipped with efficient mechanisms of odor-background segregation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2015\/09\/14\/aims-2\/\">Project Aims<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2015\/09\/14\/team\/\">Project Team<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2015\/09\/14\/research-plan\/\">Research Plan<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2015\/09\/14\/funding\/\">Funding<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Animals as diverse as mammals, birds and insects use odors to find mates, hosts and food sources. This is a difficult task because natural odors occur in complex turbulent air plumes and the relevant target odors intermingle with plumes of multiple background odors stemming from a variety of natural and anthropogenic sources (vegetation, exhaust fumes, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2015\/09\/15\/introduction\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Introduction<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/odor-objects.inf.sussex.ac.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}