Search bioRxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.64898/2026.04.12.717996

Ontogenetic expansion and regionalization of the triatomine compound eye supports flight-related vision

Chialina, T. M.·Gentili, H. G.·Minoli, S. A.·Beron de Astrada, M.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Triatomines are the vectors of Chagas disease, one of the main endemic diseases from South to North America, now expanding to other continents. These hemimetabolous insects have been considered poorly visual animals. However, recent findings challenge this idea. Here, we used Rhodnius prolixus as a model species to comprehensively characterize triatomine compound eyes. We found that in the adult stage, eye size significantly exceeds the dimensions predicted by the nymphal eye growth rate. Moreover, while the compound eye grows symmetrically in its dorsal and ventral directions throughout the nymphal instars, in the adult, the eye undergoes greater ventral growth, resulting in a dorsoventrally asymmetrical eye. By studying a bright pseudopupil induced by fluorescence in natural mutant animals, we observed no major differences in sampling resolution between the last nymphal instar and the adult stage. However, the adult eye possesses significantly larger ommatidia, particularly in its ventral region, shifting the area of highest sensitivity from the equatorial region in the nymphal instars to the ventral region in the adult. A similar eye growth pattern was observed in Triatoma infestans and Panstrongylus megistus. The analysis of photographic records from 39 species across 10 genera indicates that an asymmetrical eye is the predominant eye pattern in adult triatomines. Notable exceptions in wingless adults of Mepraia spinolai, reveal a tight association between possessing a large asymmetrical eye and the presence of wings. This suggests that vision might support triatomine dispersal flights among other visual behaviors. Significance StatementKissing bugs are hematophagous insects known for being the vectors of Chagas disease, one of the main endemic diseases in the Americas. Vision was not considered a relevant sensory system in these insects. Here, we show that their eyes increase in size beyond expected by ontogeny and become asymmetrical when transitioning from the last nymphal instar to the adult stage. The eyes undergo a ventral expansion that shifts the region of greatest light sensitivity from the equatorial zone in nymphs to the ventral region in adults. We found this asymmetrical eye only in winged kissing bugs, suggesting that vision supports flight. This is relevant in ecological and epidemiological terms since kissing bugs disperse by flight for habitat colonization and host-seeking.

Explore related subjects

neurosciencePreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Chialina, T. M., Gentili, H. G., Minoli, S. A., Beron de Astrada, M.. 2026-04-14. Ontogenetic expansion and regionalization of the triatomine compound eye supports flight-related vision. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.12.717996

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

Same Movements, Different Skills: How Context Shapes Learning in Humans and Neural Networks

What determines whether experiences are integrated into shared representations or split? Motor skill learning offers a revealing test: when two tasks require an identical sequence of movements, both intuition and theory suggest that practice in one should generalize to the other. Yet we find that changing context can make identical movements different skills. In simple recurrent networks trained on the same sequence across contexts, splitting was greatest when strong contextual inputs coincided with a high initial weight scale; neither alone sufficed. Greater representational separation coincided with separate context-specific learning curves. Humans practicing the same finger sequence while alternating between two performance-irrelevant contexts likewise exhibited context-specific curves, rather than the single continuous trajectory observed when practicing in a single context. State-space modeling favored split learning states in humans and very weakly coupled states in the most context-dependent networks. These findings have broader implications for understanding how learning generalizes across contexts.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

Postpartum resource scarcity reshapes maternal care, offspring prioritization, and the steroid-sensitive medial preoptic area

Parental care requires balancing offspring needs with environmental constraints, yet how resource scarcity alters the organization of maternal responses remains poorly understood. Here, we examined maternal behavior, offspring prioritization, and steroid receptor-associated extracellular matrix organization in postpartum rats exposed to limited bedding and nesting (LBN) or control conditions with ample nesting materials. LBN increased pup-directed and reduced self-directed behaviors but also increased behavioral entropy, a measure of behavioral fragmentation, indicating less predictable caregiving sequences. LBN dams preferentially retrieved male pups first, whereas control dams preferentially retrieved females first. LBN also increased the proportion of pup-investigation time directed toward males compared with controls. In offspring on postnatal day 10, corticosterone was elevated in female but not male LBN pups, a pattern that paralleled the maternal male bias. To identify associated neurobiological changes, we assessed steroid receptors and extracellular matrix organization in the medial preoptic area (mPOA), a key region for maternal behavior. LBN increased numbers of estrogen receptor (ER)- and androgen receptor (AR)-immunoreactive cells, reduced perineuronal net (PNN) abundance, and decreased receptor-positive cell enwrapment. Because PNNs constrain structural plasticity, these findings suggest that the postpartum environment alters the organization of steroid receptor-associated extracellular matrix, potentially modulating experience-dependent plasticity in neurosteroid-sensitive circuits. In sum, LBN increases the levels of maternal engagement while reshaping its temporal organization and allocation, accompanied by selective remodeling of steroid-sensitive preoptic architecture. Therefore, maternal adaptation to adversity may be better understood as changes in caregiving allocation strategies rather than a simple gain or loss of maternal care.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

The Computational Grammar of Human Behaviour in a Biological Environment

Human behaviour unfolds as an extended stream of spontaneous actions shaped by environmental demands and the agent's goals. The organisation of these actions, situated between setting abstract goals and concrete movement execution, remains poorly characterised. Here, we introduce DynaClade, an unsupervised temporal action segmentation algorithm for human full-body motion capture data, and apply it to freely moving participants navigating ecologically realistic risky foraging environments in virtual reality. DynaClade identifies discrete actions whose kinematic characteristics and spatial distributions correspond to environmental affordances, supporting the validity of the approach. Among these actions, we discovered a hitherto undescribed movement pattern defined by increased body sway without locomotion. Action sequences were highly non-random and showed clear history dependence beyond first-order Markov structure, most of which was explained by a second-order prediction. This higher-order structure was well captured in a hidden Markov model, in which some of the observed actions were associated with more than one latent state. Each of these latent states corresponded to the same action in a distinct action context. These findings suggest that spontaneous human actions are predominantly selected based on the current action and context, rather than following pre-planned or habitually assembled sequences.

neuroscience↗