Temperature-dependent behaviours are genetically variable in the nematode Caenorhabditis briggsae.

Temperature-dependent behaviours in Caenorhabditis elegans, such as thermotaxis and isothermal tracking, are complex behavioural responses that integrate sensation, foraging and learning, and have driven investigations to discover many essential genetic and neural pathways. The ease of manipulation of the Caenorhabditis model system also has encouraged its application to comparative analyses of phenotypic evolution, particularly contrasts of the classic model C. elegans with C.

Emergence of long timescales and stereotyped behaviors in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Animal behaviors often are decomposable into discrete, stereotyped elements, well separated in time. In one model, such behaviors are triggered by specific commands; in the extreme case, the discreteness of behavior is traced to the discreteness of action potentials in the individual command neurons. Here, we use the crawling behavior of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to demonstrate the opposite view, in which discreteness, stereotypy, and long timescales emerge from the collective dynamics of the behavior itself.

ENU-3 is a novel motor axon outgrowth and guidance protein in C. elegans.

During the development of the nervous system, the migration of many cells and axons is guided by extracellular molecules. These molecules bind to receptors at the tips of the growth cones of migrating axons and trigger intracellular signaling to steer the axons along the correct trajectories. We have identified a novel mutant, enu-3 (enhancer of Unc), that enhances the motor neuron axon outgrowth defects observed in strains of Caenorhabditis elegans that lack either the UNC-5 receptor or its ligand UNC-6/Netrin.