The world of insects is vast and challenging, with environmental changes posing a significant threat to their mobile lifestyles. Despite this, they have developed remarkable cognitive mechanisms to navigate and remember spatial locations, adapting their behaviour to suit their habitats. It’s a testament to the power of evolution, all while operating under limited neural architectures. Insects are a fascinating area of study, offering a unique window into behaviour. Their diversity and navigation skills, achieved with simple tools, make them ideal for comparative research. Additionally, their compact size allows for controlled experiments, and their nervous system’s relative simplicity offers a tractable model for understanding navigation’s neural basis.

Romita is an aspiring neuroscience researcher who is interested in studying the flexible decision-making processes of animals. Her research focuses on the interplay between sensory perception and decision-making in insects, and she uses the well-studied fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model organism. Her goal is to map the specific sensory conditions that trigger different orientation and navigational behaviours in Drosophila in the Haberkern Lab. She plans to achieve this by employing optogenetics, calcium imaging, and virtual reality, and hopes to link these behavioural shifts to specific neural circuits within the fly’s brain. Additionally, her research explores the influence of visual neuron responses in Drosophila’s locomotion, highlighting the tight coupling between sensory input and motor output (sensorimotor integration). In the Ache Lab, Romita plans to utilise kinematics, optogenetics and leg tracking to understand how individual limbs contribute to navigational choices. This will provide insights into how the descending signals from the brain are received by the VNC and the leg muscles involved in movement to produce locomotor outputs.

Romita holds a Master’s degree in Applied Biosciences and Biotechnology from Imperial College London, where she did her thesis in the Gilestro lab, investigating the evolution of sleep homeostasis in different species of Drosophila. She also has experience working in science communication, outreach and citizen sciences at Earthwatch Europe and CSIR Institute of Microbial Technology. Originally from India, she moved to London for her master’s and is currently working towards a joint PhD in the Haberkern and Ache Labs at the University of Würzburg. Romita’s PhD project is co-supervised by Hannah Haberkern, Chris Dallmann, and Jan Ache.