Basil el Jundi, PhD
Group Leader SCIENTIFIC Education
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Research InterestMy research aims at understanding how insects use different cues in their environment to set and mantain a desired heading, and how these cues are intergrated in the brain. I have started my research as a PhD student in the laboratory of Uwe Homberg (University of Marburg, Germany), where I studied the sky-compass network in the desert locust brain anatomically and electrophysiologically. Afterwards, I was a postdoc and research fellow in Marie Dacke's lab in the Lund Vision Group (Lund University, Sweden) where I investigated compass orientation in South-African ball-rolling dung beetles through electrophysiological, neuroanatomical, and behavioral experiments. Since 2017, I have started my independent research group. In my group we are focusing on the migratory behavior of the North American Monarch butterfly Danaus plexippus. To understand how these animals use different orientation cues to find their way to their overwintering site in Central Mexico, we use a combination of behavioral, anatomical, and electrophysiological approaches.
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SElected Publications (FolLow Link for full publication list)
- Beetz MJ, Kraus C, el Jundi B (2023) Neural representation of goal direction in the monarch butterfly brain. Nature Comm 14:5859.
- 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.
- 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.
- Dacke M, Bell ATA, Foster JJ, Baird EJ, Strube-Bloss MF, Byrne MJ, and el Jundi B (2019) Multimodal cue integration in the dung beetle compass. PNAS 116:14248-14253.
- Immonen EV, Dacke M, Heinze S, and el Jundi B (2017) Anatomical organization of the brain of a diurnal and a nocturnal dung beetle, J Comp Neurol 525: 1879-1908.