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M. Jerome Beetz, PhD
​Postdocteral Fellow

SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION

  • 2008 - 2011 Bachelor of Science in Biology at the University of Marburg (Germany) 
  • 2011 - 2013 Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience at the University of Frankfurt (Germany)
  • 2014 - 2018 PhD at the University of Frankfurt, Germany
  • since 2018 Postdoc at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany

APPLIED TECHNIQUES

RESEARCH INTEREST

How do animals orient? What kind of cues do animals use for orientation and how are they encoded in the brain? These are only some aspects that fascinated me since I was an undergraduate student in Uwe Homberg’s lab in Marburg (Germany). During this time, I studied the compass network of desert locusts anatomically and electrophysiologically (intracellular recordings), to understand how compass cues, such as polarized light, are encoded in migrating insects. As a PhD student, I moved from invertebrate vision to vertebrate audition and worked electrophysiologically on the echolocation system of bats in the lab of Manfred Kössl in Frankfurt. My focus was to investigate how natural and ethologically relevant stimuli are processed in the bat’s brain. During my PhD, I realized that researcher working on vertebrates and invertebrates are tackling similar methodical challenges and scientific questions in their research fields. For instance, both fields aim at understanding how natural scenes are coded in the brain, and how the animals’ behavioral context affects the activity of a neural network. With this in mind, I decided to choose a different model organism as a postdoc that will allow me to fully understand the neuroethology of orientation in animals. Since 2017, I am a postdoc in Basil el Jundi’s lab in Würzburg (Germany), where I study the navigation behavior of monarch butterflies. As this animal is amenable to behavioral and electropyhsiological studies, I am currently establishing a method that allows me to directly record neural activity in a flying monarch butterfly. The butterfly can freely set a desired compass direction with respect to a visual stimulus, such as an ersatz sun, landmarks or polarized light, while I observe the neural activity through tetrode recordings. To understand how the neurons process information under natural conditions, my long-term goal is to replace the artificial cues by natural scenes. 

Curriculum Vitae

PUBLICATIONS

  • Beetz MJ, Kraus C, Franzke M, Dreyer D, Strube-Bloss MF, Rössler W, Warrant EJ, Merlin C, el Jundi B (2021) State-dependent egocentric and allocentric heading representation in the monarch butterfly brain. BioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.07.438824.
  • Nguyen TAT, Beetz MJ, Merlin C, el Jundi B (2021) Sun compass neurons are tuned to migratory orientation in monarch butterflies. Proc R Soc B 288: 20202988.
  • Franzke M, Kraus C, Dreyer D, Pfeiffer K, Beetz MJ, Stoeckl AL, Foster JJ, Warrant EJ, el Jundi B (2020) Spatial orientation based on multiple visual cues in non-migratory monarch butterflies. J Exp Biol 223: jeb223800.​​
  • García-Rosales, F., Martin, L.M., Beetz, M.J., Cabral-Calderin, Y., Kössl, M., Hechavarria, J.C. (2018) Low-Frequency Spike-Field Coherence Is a Fingerprint of Periodicity Coding in the Auditory Cortex. iScience 9:47-62.
  • García-Rosales, F., Beetz, M.J., Cabral-Calderi, Y., Kössl, M., Hechavarria, J.C. (2018) Neuronal coding of multiscale temporal features in communication sequences within the bat auditory cortex. Communication Biology 1:200.
  • Beetz, M.J., el Jundi, B. (2018) Insect Orientation: Stay on Course with the Sun. Current Biology 28:R933-R936.
  • Beetz, M.J., García-Rosales, F., Kössl, M., Hechavarría, J.C. (2018) Robustness of cortical and subcortical processing in the presence of natural masking sounds. Scientific Reports, 8:6863.
  • Beetz, M. J., Kordes, S., García-Rosales, F., Kössl, M., and Hechavarría, J. C. (2017) Processing of Natural Echolocation Sequences in the Inferior Colliculus of Seba's Fruit Eating Bat, Carollia perspicillata. Society for Neuroscience 4, ENEURO.0314-17.2017.
  • Martin, L.M., García-Rosales, F., Beetz, M.J., Hechavarría, J.C. (2017) Processing of temporally patterned sounds in the auditory cortex of Seba's short-tailed bat, Carollia perspicillata. Journal of European Neuroscience, 46:2365-2379.
  • Malzer, M., Krozer, V., Pozdniakov, D., Salman, R., Beetz, M.J., Kössl, M. (2017) Activity monitoring of bats in a laboratory flight tunnel using a 24 GHz FMCW radar system. 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) 2017
  • Hechavarría, J.C., Beetz, M.J., Macias S., Kössl M. (2016) Vocal sequences suppress spiking in the bat auditory cortex while evoking concomitant steady-state local field potentials. Scientific Reports, 6:39226.
  • Beetz, M.J., Hechavarría, J.C., Kössl, M. (2016) Cortical neurons of bats respond best to echoes from nearest targets when listening to natural biosonar multi-echo streams. Scientific Reports, 6:35991.
  • Beetz, M.J., Pfeiffer, K., Homberg, U. (2016) Neurons in the brain of the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria sensitive to polarized light at low stimulus elevations. Journal of Comparative Physiology A 202:759-781.
  • Beetz, M.J., Hechavarría, J.C., Kössl, M. (2016) Temporal tuning in the bat auditory cortex is sharper when studied with natural echolocation sequences. Scientific Reports, 6:29102.
  • Hechavarría, J.C., Beetz, M.J., Macias, S., Kössl, M. (2016) Distress vocalization sequences broadcasted by bats carry redundant information. Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 202:503-15.
  • Moll, J., Malzer, M., Scholz, N., Krozer, V., Pozdniakov, D., Salman, R., Zimmermann, R., Hechavarría, J.C., Beetz, M.J., Kössl, M. (2016) Radar-based detection of bats: Experiments in a laboratory flight tunnel. 10th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) 2016
  • Beetz, M.J., El Jundi, B., Heinze, S., Homberg, U. (2015) Topographic organization and possible function of the posterior optic tubercles in the brain of the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 523:1589-607.