M. Jerome Beetz, PhD
​Postdocteral Fellow

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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

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APPLIED TECHNIQUES

Electrophysiology

Behavior

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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

• Nguyen TAT, Beetz MJ, Merlin C, Pfeiffer K, el Jundi B (2022) Weighting of celestial and terrestrial cues in the monarch butterfly central complex. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2022.01.25.477695.
• Beetz MJ, Kraus C, Franzke M, Dreyer D, Strube-Bloss MF, Rössler W, Warrant EJ, Merlin C, el Jundi B (2022) Flight-induced compass representation in the monarch butterfly heading network. Curr Biol ​32: 338-349.
• Beetz MJ, Kössl M, Hechavarría JC (2021) The frugivorous bat Carollia perspicillata dynamically changes echolocation parameters in response to acoustic playback. J Exp Biol 224:jeb234245.
• 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.
• Held M, Le K, Pegel U, Dersch F, Beetz MJ, Pfeiffer K, Homberg U (2020) Anatomical and ultrastructural analysis of the posterior optic tubercle in the locust Schistocerca gregaria. Arthropod Struct Dev 58:100971.
• 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.​
• Hechavarría JC, Beetz MJ, García-Rosales F, Kössl M (2020) Bats distress vocalizations carry fast amplitude modulations that could represent an acoustic correlate of roughness. Sci Rep 10:1-20.
• Beetz MJ, Kössl M, Hechavarría JC (2019) Adaptations in the call emission pattern of frugivorous bats when orienting under challenging conditions. J Comp Physiol A 205:457-467
• García-Rosales F, Martin LM, Beetz MJ, Cabral-Calderin Y, Kössl M, Hechavarria JC (2018) Low-Frequency Spike-Field Coherence Is a Fingerprint of Periodicity Coding in the Auditory Cortex. iScience 9:47-62.
• García-Rosales F, Beetz MJ, Cabral-Calderi Y, Kössl M, Hechavarria JC (2018) Neuronal coding of multiscale temporal features in communication sequences within the bat auditory cortex. Communication Biology 1:200.
• Beetz MJ, el Jundi B (2018) Insect Orientation: Stay on Course with the Sun. Curr Biol 28:R933-R936.
• Beetz MJ, García-Rosales F, Kössl M, Hechavarría JC (2018) Robustness of cortical and subcortical processing in the presence of natural masking sounds. Sci Rep 8:6863.
• Beetz MJ, Kordes S, García-Rosales F, Kössl M, Hechavarría JC (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 LM, García-Rosales F, Beetz MJ, Hechavarría JC (2017) Processing of temporally patterned sounds in the auditory cortex of Seba's short-tailed bat, Carollia perspicillata. J Euro Neurosci, 46:2365-2379.
• Malzer M, Krozer V, Pozdniakov D, Salman R, Beetz MJ, 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 JC, Beetz MJ, Macias S, Kössl M (2016) Vocal sequences suppress spiking in the bat auditory cortex while evoking concomitant steady-state local field potentials. Sci Rep, 6:39226.
• Beetz MJ, Hechavarría JC, Kössl M (2016) Cortical neurons of bats respond best to echoes from nearest targets when listening to natural biosonar multi-echo streams. Sci Rep, 6:35991.
• Beetz MJ, Pfeiffer K, Homberg U (2016) Neurons in the brain of the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria sensitive to polarized light at low stimulus elevations. J Comp Physiol A 202:759-781.
• Beetz MJ, Hechavarría JC, Kössl M (2016) Temporal tuning in the bat auditory cortex is sharper when studied with natural echolocation sequences. Sci Rep, 6:29102.
• Hechavarría JC, Beetz MJ, Macias S, Kössl M (2016) Distress vocalization sequences broadcasted by bats carry redundant information. J Comp Physiol A 202:503-15.
• Moll J, Malzer M, Scholz N, Krozer V, Pozdniakov D, Salman R, Zimmermann R, Hechavarría JC, Beetz MJ, Kössl M (2016) Radar-based detection of bats: Experiments in a laboratory flight tunnel. 10th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) 2016
• Beetz, MJ, 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. J Comp Neurol 523:1589-607.