Prof. Dr. Paul A. Stevenson

Control of aggression by biogenic amines in crickets

(Project within DFG Research Group FOR 1363 LINK)

The aggressive behavior expressed by animals towards members of their own species is influenced by numerous social and other experiences. The project proposed here aims to establish the causative role of biogenic amines (primarily octopamine and serotonin) in experience-dependent plasticity of aggression in male crickets. This will provide general insights into the mechanisms that adapt aggressive behaviour to individual needs and social constraints, in a comparatively simple animal model system. In intact freely behaving crickets we aim to quantify the influences of residency, winning, losing, isolation and crowding on aggressiveness, and investigate how this is influenced by injecting amines and aminergic drugs. Similarly, but now at the neuronal level, we will investigate how local injection of aminergic drugs modulate the responsiveness of identified brain interneurones to an agonistic, aggression-inducing stimulus (mechanical antennal stimulation). By combining transmitter immunocytochemistry with conventional neurone tracing we will identify candidate aminergic neurones with projections in mechanosensory antennal neuropile, and investigate how these neurones modulate the described interneurones. By mapping the spatial relationships of aminergic varicosities to afferent synapses with the studied interneurones we will gain insights into the extent to which amines function as global-general or local-dedicated modulators of complex behavior.

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- Aggression

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Project members

Prof. Dr. Paul A. Stevenson (primary investigator)
Ann-Julianne Breitenbach (Masters student; Doctorate student starting August 2011)Samuel Nauck (student assistant, SHK, Bachelor Student)

Other collaborators (past and present)

Dr. Edgar Buhl (University of Bristol, UK), Dr. Varya Dyakonova (Moscow), Prof. Dr. Hans Hofmann (University of Texas, Austin), Dr. Jan Rillich (FU-Berlin), Prof. Dr. Klaus Schildberger (University of Leipzig), Dr. Korinna Schoch (Leica Microsystems)

Recent relevant publications


Simpson S, Stevenson P. A. (2013) Modulation of Social Behaviour in Insects. In  Canli, T. (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Molecular Psychology. Oxford, New York,  Oxford University Press. (in press)


Stevenson PA, Rillich J (2013) Isolation associated aggression -  a consequence of recovery from defeat in a territorial animal. PloS ONE 8(9) e74965


Stevenson PA, Schildberger K (2013) Mechanisms of experience dependent control of aggression in crickets. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 23:1-6


Stevenson PA, Rillich J. (2012) The decision to fight or flee - insights into underlying mechanism in crickets. Front. Neurosci. 6:118. doi:10.3389/fnins.2012.00118


Rillich J, Stevenson PA (2011) Winning fights induces hyper-aggression via the action of the biogenic amine octopamine in crickets. PloS ONE 6(12): e2889. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028891


Rillich J, Schildberger K, Stevenson PA (2011) Octopamine and occupancy - an aminergic mechanism for intruder-resident aggression in crickets. Proceedings of the Royal Society London B 278:1873-1880


Schöneich S, Schildberger K and Stevenson PA (2011) Neuronal organization of a fast-mediating cephalo-thoracic pathway for antennal-tactile information in the cricket  (Gryllus bimaculatus DeGeer). J. Comp. Neurol. 519:1677-1690 DOI:10.1002/cne.22594


Rillich J, Buhl E, Schildberger K, Stevenson PA (2009) Female crickets are driven to fight by the male courting and calling songs. Animal Behaviour 77:737-742.


Rillich J, Schildberger K, Stevenson PA (2007) Assessment strategy of fighting crickets revealed by manipulating information exchange. Animal Behaviour 74:823-836.


Stevenson PA, Dyakonova V, Rillich J, Schildberger K (2005) Octopamine and experience-dependent modulation of aggression in crickets. J Neurosci 25:1431-1441.