Sensorimotor control during isothermal tracking in Caenorhabditis elegans

In order to purposefully navigate their environments, animals rely on precise coordination between their sensory and motor systems. The integrated performance of circuits for sensorimotor control may be analyzed by quantifying an animal's motile behavior in defined sensory environments. Here, we analyze the ability of the nematode C. elegans to crawl isothermally in spatial thermal gradients by quantifying the trajectories of individual worms responding to defined spatiotemporal thermal gradients. We show that sensorimotor control during isothermal tracking may be summarized as a strategy in which the worm changes the curvature of its propulsive undulations in response to temperature changes measured at its head. We show that a concise mathematical model for this strategy for sensorimotor control is consistent with the exquisite stability of the worm's isothermal alignment in spatial thermal gradients as well as its more complex trajectories in spatiotemporal thermal gradients.