How octopus arms make decisions

Date:  June 25, 2019

Source:  American Geophysical Union

Researchers studying the behavior and neuroscience of octopuses have long suspected that the animals' arms may have minds of their own.

A new model being presented in Bellevue, Washington State, is the first attempt at a comprehensive representation of information flow between the octopus's suckers, arms and brain, based on previous research in octopus neuroscience and behavior, and new video observations conducted in the lab.

The new research supports previous findings that octopus' suckers can initiate action in response to information they acquire from their environment, coordinating with neighboring suckers along the arm. The arms then process sensory and motor information, and muster collective action in the peripheral nervous system, without waiting on commands from the brain.

The result is a bottom-up, or arm-up, decision mechanism rather than the brain-down mechanism typical of vertebrates, like humans, according to Dominic Sivitilli, a graduate student in behavioral neuroscience and astrobiology at the University of Washington in Seattle who will present the new research Wednesday at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon 2019).

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Soldier Bugs Protect Colony From Threats Large and Small

The insects often called thunderbugs include soldiers that use their lengthy "arms" to squeeze the life out of invading rivals. New research suggests these soldiers also defend against much tinier invaders: They produce a compound that kills off some microbes.

"In a lot of other insect species as well, the soldiers are actually the ones who protect against those macroscopic and microscopic species," said Holly Caravan, of Memorial University of Newfoundland,  Canada, who studied the thunderbugs, the tiny flying insects also known as thrips.

Caravan and her colleagues focused on a species, Kladothrips intermedius, reaching just 0.08 inches (2 millimeters) long, that build their homes inside of plants in southern Australia. Each colony lives in a a gall, a generic name for a bulbous growth on a plant, set up by a single thrips.

This colony creator gives rise to two "castes" of offspring: those that go out and create their own gall (they are called dispersers) and those that defend the existing gall (known as soldiers). The soldier thrips are very different in shape than the dispersers, having much smaller wings since they don't need to fly far. They also have extra-long arms to squeeze the life out of invaders trying to make their way into the gall.

Read further:  http://www.livescience.com/19610-soldier-thrips-microbes.html