BEHAVIORAL COMPENSATION FOR ALTERED CERCAL POSITION IN THE COCKROACH

Intracellular recordings were made from identified giant interneurons (GI) in the ventral nerve cord of the cockroach, Periplaneta americana, both before and after the ipsilateral cercus was rotated to point in a new direction. The orientation of some GI wind receptive fields is shifted in the same direction as the cercal rotation. In free-ranging cockroaches, unilateral cercal rotations lead to a misorientation of turning movements made in response to wind puffs from certain directions. When one cercus is kept rotated for approximately a month, animals eventually display significant changes in the orientation of their wind-evoked turning movements. These changes partially compensate for the initial misorientation of turning behavior. The behavioral compensation takes several weeks to develop.