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C. Elegans Demonstrates Distinct Behaviors Within A Fixed And Uniform Electric Field, Steven D. Chrisman, Christopher B. Waite, Alison G. Scoville, Lucinda Carnell

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

C. elegans will orient and travel in a straight uninterrupted path directly towards the negative pole of a DC electric field. We have sought to understand the strategy worms use to navigate to the negative pole in a uniform electric field that is fixed in both direction and magnitude. We examined this behavior by quantifying three aspects of electrotaxis behavior in response to different applied field strengths: the mean approach trajectory angles of the animals’ tracks, turning behavior (pirouettes) and average population speeds. We determined that C. elegans align directly to the negative pole of an electric field at sub-preferred …