Neuroethology

Andrea Gonsek
Hello there! I am curious about how insects perceive their environment and want to understand the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of sensory information.
In my PhD I will investigate how the visual system of hawkmoths processes highly dynamic visual inputs based on natural sceneries!
I will first use flight trajectories of hawkmoths to make recordings of natural visual sceneries along their travelled path. Based on these recordings, I want to quantify the visual information in natural environments for two hawkmoth species - the diurnal hummingbird hawkmoth and the nocturnal elephant hawkmoth. By doing intracellular recordings, I aim to reveal how the spatiotemporal tuning of early visual neurons adjusts to rapidly changing light intensities of their natural environment.
My research
I am currently working on writing this section! Stay tuned!