Hidehiro Watanabe

Fukuoka University · Department of Earth System Science

Periplaneta cockroaches use periplanone analogs as female sex pheromones to attract males. We previously identified two periplanone receptor genes, PameOR1 and PameOR2 , in the American cockroach Periplaneta americana . Here, we report the identification of PameOR1-like , an additional olfactory receptor resembling PameOR1 in P. americana . PameOR1...

Advanced social behavior, or eusociality, has been evolutionarily profound, allowing colonies of ants, termites, social wasps, and bees to dominate competitively over solitary species throughout the Cenozoic. Advanced sociality requires not just nestmate cooperation and specialization but refined coordination and communication. Here, we provide ind...

Many animals use multi-component sex pheromones for mating, but the specific function and neural processing of each pheromone component remain unclear. The cockroach Periplaneta americana is a model for studying sex pheromone communication, and an adult female emits major and minor sex pheromone components, periplanone-B and -A (PB and PA), respect...

To represent specific olfactory cues from the highly complex and dynamic odor world in the brain, insects employ multiple parallel olfactory pathways that process odors with different coding strategies. Here, we summarize the anatomical and physiological features of parallel olfactory pathways in the hemimetabolous insect, the cockroach Periplaneta...

To maintain the eusociality of a colony, ants recognize subtle differences in colony-specific sets of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs). The CHCs are received by female-specific antennal basiconic sensilla and processed in specific brain regions. However, it is controversial whether a peripheral or central neural mechanism is mainly responsible for dis...

Insects have developed their sophisticated olfactory sensory system to utilize the odor information for foraging, mating and communicating between conspecifics. Recently, the analysis of genes related to olfactory reception has been rapidly progressed, and a lot of olfactory receptor genes have been reported in non-model insects. To identify functi...

Insects detect odors via a large variety of odorant receptors (ORs) expressed in olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). The insect OR is a heteromeric complex composed of a ligand-specific receptor and the co-receptor (ORco). In this study, we identified the ORco gene of the cockroach, Periplaneta americana (PameORco), and performed RNA interference (RN...

Animals highly depend on their sensory organs to detect information about their surrounding environment. Among animal sensory organs, those of insects have a notable ability to detect information despite their small size, which might be, therefore, one of the reasons for the evolutionary success of insects. However, insect sensory organs are seldom...

Although praying mantises rely mainly on vision for predatory behaviours, olfaction also plays a critical role in feeding and mating behaviours. However, the receptive processes underlying olfactory signals remain unclear. Here, we identified olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) that are highly tuned to detect aldehydes in the mantis Tenodera aridifoli...

In the common pest cockroach, Periplaneta americana, behavioural responses to the sex and aggregation pheromones change in an age-dependent manner. Nymphs are attracted by the aggregation pheromone periplanolide-E (PLD-E) but not by the sex pheromone periplanone-B (PB) in faeces. Adults display prominent behaviours to PB but not to PLD-E. Despite t...

The praying mantis is a good model for the study of motor control, especially for investigating the transformation from sensory signals into motor commands. In insects, thoracic ganglia play an important role in motor control. To understand the functional organization of thoracic ganglia, an atlas is useful. However, except for the fruitfly, no thr...

In the cockroach Periplaneta americana, to represent pheromone source in the receptive space, axon terminals of sex pheromone‐receptive olfactory sensory neurons (pSNs) are topographically organized within the primary center, the macroglomerulus, according to the peripheral locations of sex pheromone‐receptive single walled (sw) ‐B sensilla. In thi...

In animals, sensory processing via parallel pathways, including the olfactory system, is a common design. However, the mechanisms that parallel pathways use to encode highly complex and dynamic odor signals remain unclear. In the current study, we examined the anatomical and physiological features of parallel olfactory pathways in an evolutionally...

Olfaction in insects plays pivotal roles in searching for food and/or for sexual partners. Although many studies have focused on the olfactory processes of non-predatory insect species, little is known about those in predatory insects. Here, we investigated the anatomical features of the primary olfactory center (antennal lobes) in an insect predat...

Global inhibition is a fundamental physiological mechanism that has been proposed to shape odor representation in higher-order olfactory centers. A pair of mushroom bodies (MBs) in insect brains, an analogue of the mammalian olfactory cortex, are implicated in multisensory integration and associative memory formation. With the use of single/multipl...

Insects possess antennae equipped with a large number of segments (flagellomeres) on which sensory organs (sensilla) are located. Hemimetabolous insects grow by molting until they reach adulthood. In these species, the sensory structures develop and mature during each stage of development; new flagellomeres are generated at each molt elongating the...

Antennae of insects contain of a vast array of sensory neurons that process olfactory, gustatory, mechanosensory, hygrosensory and thermosensory information. Except those with multimodal functions, most sensory neurons use acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter. Using immunohistochemistry combined with retrograde staining of antennal sensory neurons i...

Crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) and cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) have emerged as pertinent models for studying the neural basis of learning and memory. This is partly because they have excellent capabilities for olfactory and visual learning and partly because their rather large brains allow detailed physiological, pharmacological, and micros...

In insects, the antenna consists on a scapus, a pedicellus, and a flagellum comprising many segments (flagellomeres). These segments possess many morphological types of sensory organs (sensilla) to process multimodal sensory information. We observed the sensilla on flagellomeres in praying mantis (Tenodera aridifolia) with both scanning and transmi...

The molecular and neural basis of protein synthesis-dependent long-term memory (LTM) has been the subject of extensive studies in vertebrates and invertebrates. In crickets and honey bees, it has been demonstrated that nitric oxide (NO) signaling plays critical roles in LTM formation, but no experimental system appropriate for electrophysiological...

Context-dependent discrimination learning, a sophisticated form of nonelemental associative learning, has been found in many animals, including insects. The major purpose of this research is to establish a method for monitoring this form of nonelemental learning in rigidly restrained insects for investigation of underlying neural mechanisms. We rep...

In animals, odor qualities are represented as both spatial activity patterns of glomeruli and temporal patterns of synchronized oscillatory signals in the primary olfactory centers. By optical imaging of a voltage-sensitive dye (VSD) and intracellular recording from secondary olfactory interneurons, we examined possible neural correlates of the spa...

In vertebrates and many invertebrates, olfactory signals detected by peripheral olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) are conveyed to a primary olfactory center with glomerular organization in which odor-specific activity patterns are generated. In the cockroach, Periplaneta americana, ORNs in antennal olfactory sensilla project to 205 unambiguously id...

Ants, eusocial insects, have highly elaborate chemical communication systems using a wide variety of pheromones. In the carpenter ant, Camponotus japonicus, workers and queens have the female-specific basiconic sensilla on antennae. The antennal lobe, the primary processing center, in female carpenter ants contains about 480 glomeruli, which are di...

The cockroach Periplaneta americana is an evolutionary basal neopteran insect, equipped with one of the largest and most elaborate mushroom bodies among insects. Using intracellular recording and staining in the protocerebrum, we discovered two new types of neurons that receive direct input from the optic lobe in addition to the neuron previously r...

In insects, cholinergic neurons are thought to transmit olfactory conditioned stimulus (CS) to the sites for associating the CS with unconditioned stimulus (US), but the types of acetylcholine (ACh) receptor used by neurons participating in the association have not been determined. In cockroaches, a type of nicotinic ACh receptor specifically antag...

Glomeruli are structural and functional units in the primary olfactory center in vertebrates and insects. In the cockroach Periplaneta americana, axons of different types of sensory neurons housed in sensilla on antennae form dorsal and ventral antennal nerves and then project to a number of glomeruli. In this study, we identified all antennal lobe...

Ants have well-developed chemosensory systems for social lives. The goal of our study is to understand the functional organization of the ant chemosensory system based on caste- and sex-specific differences. Here we describe the common and sex-specific glomerular organizations in the primary olfactory center, the antennal lobe of the carpenter ant...

The antennae are a critically important component of the ant's highly elaborated chemical communication systems. However, our understanding of the organization of the sensory systems on the antennae of ants, from peripheral receptors to central and output systems, is poorly understood. Consequently, we have used scanning electron and confocal laser...

Classical conditioning of olfactory conditioning stimulus (CS) with gustatory unconditioned stimulus (US) in insects has been used as a pertinent model for elucidation of neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory. However, a conditioning system in which stable intracellular recordings from brain neurons are feasibly obtained while monitoring...

Secretion of saliva to aid swallowing and digestion is an important physiological function found in many vertebrates and invertebrates. Pavlov reported classical conditioning of salivation in dogs a century ago. Conditioning of salivation, however, has been so far reported only in dogs and humans, and its underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive...

Secretion of saliva to aid swallowing and digestion is a basic physiological function found in many vertebrates and invertebrates. For mammals, classical conditioning of salivation in dogs was reported by Pavlov a century ago. However, conditioning of salivation or of related neural activities in non-mammalian species has not been reported. In many...

We established a classical conditioning procedure for the cockroach, Periplaneta americana, by which odors were associated with reward or punishment. Cockroaches underwent differential conditioning trials in which peppermint odor was associated with sucrose solution and vanilla odor was associated with saline solution. Odor preference of cockroache...