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Animal Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Animal Sciences

Importance Of The Antenniform Legs, But Not Vision, For Homing By The Neotropical Whip Spider Paraphrynus Laevifrons, Verner P. Bingman, Jacob M. Graving, Eileen Hebets, Daniel D. Wiegmann Jan 2017

Importance Of The Antenniform Legs, But Not Vision, For Homing By The Neotropical Whip Spider Paraphrynus Laevifrons, Verner P. Bingman, Jacob M. Graving, Eileen Hebets, Daniel D. Wiegmann

Eileen Hebets Publications

Amblypygids, or whip spiders, are nocturnal, predatory arthropods that display a robust ability to navigate to their home refuge. Prior field observations and displacement studies in amblypygids demonstrated an ability to home from distances as far away as 10 m. In the current study, micro-transmitters were used to take morning position fixes of individual Paraphrynus laevifrons following an experimental displacement of 10 m from their home refuge. The intention was to assess the relative importance of vision compared with sensory input acquired from the antenniform legs for navigation as well as other aspects of their spatial behavior. Displaced individuals were …


Tick Haller's Organ, A New Paradigm For Arthropod Olfaction: How Ticks Differ From Insects, Ann L. Carr, Robert D. Michell Iii, Anirudh Dhammi, Brooke W. Bissinger, Daniel E. Sonenshine, R. Michael Roe Jan 2017

Tick Haller's Organ, A New Paradigm For Arthropod Olfaction: How Ticks Differ From Insects, Ann L. Carr, Robert D. Michell Iii, Anirudh Dhammi, Brooke W. Bissinger, Daniel E. Sonenshine, R. Michael Roe

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Ticks are the vector of many human and animal diseases; and host detection is critical to this process. Ticks have a unique sensory structure located exclusively on the 1st pairs of legs; the fore-tarsal Haller's organ, not found in any other animals, presumed to function like the insect antennae in chemosensation but morphologically very different. The mechanism of tick chemoreception is unknown. Utilizing next-generation sequencing and comparative transcriptomics between the 1st and 4th legs (the latter without the Haller's organ), we characterized 1st leg specific and putative Haller's organ specific transcripts from adult American dog ticks, Dermacentor variabilis. The …