Spontaneous neural activity in the developing ant olfactory system

Developing Ooceraea biroi olfactory sensory neurons show spontaneous calcium transients from the earliest glomerulus-formation stages, shifting from uncorrelated fast events to synchronized rhythmic sawtooth activity near eclosion.

• Why it matters: Mammalian OSN spontaneous activity depends on olfactory receptor expression and helps axon sorting, but Drosophila melanogaster forms glomeruli without functional ORs; ants may bridge this gap.
• What they did: Live calcium imaging in translucent pupae used a transgenic O. biroi line expressing GCaMP6s in OSNs to track spontaneous activity across metamorphosis.
• The result: Early activity is faster, widely variable, and uncorrelated across OSNs; mid-metamorphosis slows with longer events and fewer peaks, and near eclosion rhythmic sawtooth events synchronously engage OSNs in both antennae.