9704097 Layne The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twelve-month postdoctoral research visit by Dr. John E. Layne to work with Dr. William J. P. Barnes at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Dr. Layne will examine the physiological mechanisms that underlie the course control during locomotion in the Blue Land Crab, Cardisoma guanhumi. This will by a lab study in which extracellular recordings from visual and statocyst interneurons, eyecup motoneurones and muscles will be correlated with measurements of the eye and leg movements induced by rotation of the visual field and of the body. A related field study will be done to observe how crabs make use of visual information during locomotion in their natural environment, by disrupting their sensory guidance systems (vision, statocyst organ), and observing its affect on basic locomotion and oriented behavior (escape, homing). This study will provide an understanding of the process of visual flow analysis. The host lab is part of the Division of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, which contains several behavioral scientists. It will also provide close links with neuroscientists in other divisions of the Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences. The host, Dr. Barnes, has studied eye movements at a behavioral level for many years, and has established the current behavioral models fmr flow field analysis in invertebrates. ***
