Senior Research Associate
Ph.D. 1999, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland

I started my research work as a student at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, in the Laboratorio de Fisiologia de Insectos - Haematophagous Insects Group, directed by Dr. Josu頎?and Dr. Claudio Lazzari, respectively, I did my diploma work on the feeding behavior of the blood-sucking triatomine bugs (Heteroptera: Reduviidae) investigating the role of different components of the blood in modulating the feeding response. Later in Buenos Aires, I started collaborative work with Dr. Marcelo Lorenzo on the role of CO2 in the host finding by triatomines, resulting in the development of a trap prototype for these vectors of disease. I then moved to Switzerland where I worked in the Laboratoire de Physiologie Animale of the Institute de Zoologie - University of Neuchⴥl directed by Dr. Peter-Alan Diehl and Dr. Patrick Guerin, under the advice of Dr. Guerin. There, I isolated and identified constituents of host (vertebrate) odor that are detected by the olfactory receptors on the antenna of the triatomines, mainly using single sensilla recordings linked to gas chromatography. This work also involved a behavioral study on the role in host finding of the compounds identified, and was partially financed by the WHO-TDR. After having received my Ph. D. degree in Neuchⴥl I moved to Dr. John Hildebrand's lab in the Arizona Research Laboratories Division of Neurobiology. Here, as a postdoctoral Research Associate, I have started to work on the processing of olfactory information by the insect brain by performing intracellular recordings from neurons in the antennal lobe and using staining methods.

While antennal olfactory receptor cells (ORCs) of moths are known to respond to certain hostplant odorants and, in males, to components of the conspecific females' sex pheromone as well, ORCs of the "labial pit organ" (LPO) in the labial palp of the moths respond preferentially to a constituent of plant odor, CO2, for which no antennal receptor has been found. Axons of the ORCs of the LPO were found to project to a specific glomerulus, the "LPO-glomerulus" (LPOG), in each antennal lobe (AL), a surprising finding considering that the AL is known to be the site of primary processing of olfactory information from the antenna. Moreover, the LPOG may be specialized for processing information from the LPO (presumably CO2 information), as apparently no antennal ORC axons project to this glomerulus. This supports the idea that glomeruli are discrete functional units, hence the existence of a chemotopic map in the AL.

One of the aims of my work here is to study if (and how and where) olfactory information from CO2 receptor cells in the labial palp of the hawk moth Manduca sexta is actually processed in the antennal lobe. As the receptor cells tuned to CO2 show physiological characteristics that are fundamentally different from those of receptor cells responding to pheromones (and most kairomones), qualitative differences in the coding of CO2 respect to pheromonal information could be expected at the central level as well. I will also investigate if (and how) the information from the LPO is integrated with olfactory (e.g., plant odor) information from the antenna. Integration of information from two different olfactory organs in the AL of insects was not studied so far and it would be interesting to know how the AL performs this processing in addition to other "complex" tasks that are being found to be accomplished by this primary olfactory center.

Together with other kairomones, CO2 is believed to be used by moths as a cue to locate a hostplant (i.e., a food source in adult-feeding species and an oviposition site). In addition to contributing to the understanding on the physiology of the AL and the neural basis of host-finding behavior in moths, the use of the neurobiological approach in this work should help elucidating the host odor blend that is actually used by these insects to locate a hostplant, thus leading to the possibility of the development of control strategies of this agricultural pest by the use of synthetic odor blends to attract and trap individuals.

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