Cancelled: The neural basis of behavioral evolution: defensive responses of wild mice to a visual threat - Hopi Hoekstra

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Seminar Series Presents

Hopi Hoekstra, PhD 

Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Organismic & Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

Host: Lauren O'Connell

Abstract

The defensive response to overhead visual threat has recently emerged as a model for ethologically relevant behavior in laboratory mice, but whether differences exist in this innate behavior in natural populations and how these may arise from changes in the underlying neural circuitry is unknown. Here we focus on two sister species of deer mice (genus Peromyscus), which evolved in distinct habitats. In this talk, I will share our work to identify the brain regions, circuits and neurons with which evolution tinkered to generate different behavioral responses to the same visual stimulus in two closely related, but ecologically distinct species.