Christian Kraus, MSc
PhD student Scientific Education
Applied Techniques
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Research InterestDuring my studies of Biology, I have become increasingly interested in animal orientation and the neural correlates of orientation behaviors. As a Bachelor student in the lab of Basil el Jundi, I was interested in understanding how monarch butterflies use different visual cues, such as a simulated sun and local landmarks, for orientation during flight. I continued in the same lab as a Master student investigating the monarch butterfly brain with electrophysiological tetrode recordings in both restrained and actively orienting monarch butterflies. My focus in this project was the central complex, the brain area acting as the internal compass of insects. More specifically, I wanted to find out which cues influence the neuronal tuning in a state-dependent manner. Furthermore, I investigated whether the neuronal tuning of the heading-direction system, which is encoded in the central complex, is dynamic over time.
My PhD project will further build on my previous experiments by investigating the integration of multimodal sensory information in the brain and how orientation decisions are made based on these signals. I want to continue my multi-electrode recordings in the brain of monarch butterflies and expand them to investigate visual cues together with cues of different sensory modalities. |
PUblications
- Beetz MJ, Kraus C, el Jundi B (2023) Neural representation of goal direction in the monarch butterfly brain. Nature Comm 14:5859.
- Franzke M, Kraus C, Gayler M, Dreyer D, Pfeiffer K, el Jundi B (2022) Stimulus-dependent orientation strategies in monarch butterflies. J Exp Biol 225: jeb243687.
- 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.
- 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.