Wing hair sensilla underlying aimed hindleg scratching of the locust

Abstract

SUMMARYThe anatomy and physiology of exteroceptors on the surfaces of the wings have been described in many insects, but their roles in behaviour have been less well studied. They have often been assumed to have a role primarily in flight. We show that the wings of the locust Schistocerca gregariapossess at least three different hair types with characteristic patterns of distribution that determine the probability of eliciting targeted hindleg scratching behaviour.The different hair types are defined by their morphology and innervation. The shortest hairs (14–46 μm) are basiconic receptors containing both chemosensory and mechanosensory afferents. They are distributed widely across the dorsal surfaces of the forewings; some are located on the ventral surfaces of the hindwings, but none are found on the ventral surfaces of the forewings or the dorsal surfaces of the hindwings. Medium length hairs (73–159μm) are found on all wing surfaces, but are restricted to the veins,principally the subcosta on the dorsal surface of the forewings. The longest hairs (316–511 μm) are found only on the postcubitus vein on the dorsal surfaces of the forewings, so that they form a pair of dorsal rows when the wings are folded at rest.Touching the dorsal surface of a forewing can elicit aimed scratching movements of a hindleg, and we show that the probability of eliciting a scratch differs for different stimulus sites and for different start positions of the hind leg. The effectiveness of different stimulus sites can be correlated with the distribution of tactile hairs on the dorsal forewing surface. Touching the long hairs provides the strongest drive to elicit a scratch, and ablating them reduces the probability to almost zero. We conclude that input from forewing tactile hairs plays an important role in eliciting hindleg scratching and encodes the spatial location required for targeting.