Definition
The sense of touch, or tactile sense, belongs to the modality of mechanoreception and, more specifically, somatosensation. It is an exteroceptive sense that encodes information about physical contact events between a body part and an external object, thus informing the animal about object location, shape, and texture. In insects, the major organs for tactile sensing are the antennae (or feelers), although most body parts carry mechanoreceptive sensilla, too. Antennae are segmented, actively moveable appendages of the head. Despite the actuation, the antennae are held still in some tactile sensing behaviors (passive sensing), whereas in others they are moved actively (active sensing).
Detailed Description
Passive and Active Tactile Sensing Behaviors
Insect antennae can have very different shapes, with the shape reflecting their use in behavior. Antennae serve other sensory modalities than touch, too (e.g., smell and taste). Generally, insects with elongate, unbranched...
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Dürr, V., Krause, A.F. (2013). Tactile Sensing in Insects. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_641-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_641-1
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