Multisensory interactions regulate feeding behavior in <i>Drosophila</i>.

Abstract

The integration of two or more distinct sensory cues can help animals make more informed decisions about potential food sources, but little is known about how feeding-related multimodal sensory integration happens at the cellular and molecular levels. Here, we show that multimodal sensory integration contributes to a stereotyped feeding behavior in the model organism <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> Simultaneous olfactory and mechanosensory inputs significantly influence a taste-evoked feeding behavior called the proboscis extension reflex (PER). Olfactory and mechanical information are mediated by antennal <i>Or35a</i> neurons and leg hair plate mechanosensory neurons, respectively. We show that the controlled delivery of three different sensory cues can produce a supra-additive PER via the concurrent stimulation of olfactory, taste, and mechanosensory inputs. We suggest that the fruit fly is a versatile model system to study multisensory integration related to feeding, which also likely exists in vertebrates.