Genome Biology

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Bilateral olfaction: two is better than one for navigation

Baranidharan Raman1,2, Iori Ito1 and Mark Stopfer1*

Author Affiliations

1 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, Lincoln Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA

2 National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA

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Genome Biology 2008, 9:212 doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-3-212

Published: 31 March 2008

Abstract

Do animals require bilateral input to track odors? A recent study reveals that fruit fly larvae can localize odor sources using unilateral inputs from a single functional sensory neuron, but that an enhanced signal-to-noise ratio provided by dual inputs is helpful in more challenging environments.