Studies of the Neural Basis of Evasive Flight Behavior In Response to Acoustic Stimulation in Heliothis zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae): Motoneuronal Innervation of Flight Muscles

The organization of the motoneurons that control the indirect flight muscles of the foreand hindwings was investigated in the corn earworm, Heliothis zea (Boddie). Cut axons of the nerves supplying the dorsolongitudinal and dorsoventral muscles were infiltrated with cobalt chloride. The cell bodies of the labeled motoneurons are located throughout all thoracic ganglia. Their respective dendritic fields are organized similarly and distributed in a segmented fashion, i.e., the somata and dendrites are restricted to a rather narrow region of the neuropil. The relevance of this organization for the neural basis of behavior is discussed, focusing on the divergent axonal terminations of primary afferents of the acoustic and mechanoreceptive sensory systems.