TY - JOUR T1 - A Decision Underlies Phototaxis in an Insect JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/023846 SP - 023846 AU - E. Axel Gorostiza AU - Julien Colomb AU - Bjöern Brembs Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/14/023846.abstract N2 - Background Like a moth into the flame-Phototaxis is an iconic example for innate preferences. Such preferences likely reflect evolutionary adaptations to predictable situations and have traditionally been conceptualized as hard-wired stimulus-response links. Perhaps therefore, the century-old discovery of flexibility in Drosophila phototaxis has received little attention.Results Here we report that across several different behavioral tests, light/dark preference tested in walking is dependent on the flies' ability to fly. If we temporarily compromise flying ability, walking photopreference reverses concomitantly. Neuronal activity in circuits expressing dopamine and octopamine, respectively, plays a differential role in this case of behavioral flexibility.Conclusions We conclude that flies monitor their ability to fly, and that flying ability exerts a fundamental effect on action selection in Drosophila. This work suggests that even behaviors which appear simple and hard-wired comprise a value-driven decision-making stage, negotiating the external situation with the animal's internal state, before an action is selected. ER -