Data from: Displacement experiments provide evidence for path integration in Drosophila

Like many other animals, insects are capable of returning to previously
visited locations using path integration, a memory of travelled direction
and distance. Recent studies suggest that Drosophila can also use path
integration to return to a food reward. However, the existing experimental
evidence for path integration in Drosophila has a potential confound:
pheromones deposited at the site of reward might enable flies to find
previously rewarding locations even without memory. Thus, we designed an
experiment to determine if flies can use path integration memory despite
potential pheromonal cues by displacing the flies shortly after an
optogenetic reward. We found that rewarded flies returned to the location
predicted by a memory-based model. Several analyses are consistent with
path integration as the mechanism by which flies returned to the reward.
We conclude that while pheromones may often be important in fly navigation
and must be carefully controlled in future experiments, Drosophila may
indeed be capable of performing path integration.