Figure 3

Chemotaxis of intact and headless planarians. (A) Heat map view with contour lines of the averaged behavior of 11 individually assayed intact animals in a uniform field. Planarian showed a preference for moving along the edge of a uniform chamber. (B) Heat map view with contour lines of chemotaxis of intact planarians in chemoattractant concentration gradient field. (C) Heat map view with contour lines of chemotaxis of headless planarians in chemoattractant concentration gradient field. Planarians showed a preference for moving along the edge of the uniform-field dish. In contrast, intact planarians moved to and stayed in the region with the highest concentration of chemoattractant in the chemoattractant-gradient field. Headless planarians did not show such chemotaxis. (D) Rose plots show orientation of movement of intact and headless planarians in Zones 2 and 3 in a uniform-field and chemoattractant gradient-field. The movement of intact planarians in a uniform-field, and that of headless animals in a chemoattractant gradient-field, showed no particular orientation, whereas the movement of intact planarians was biased toward being oriented toward the highest concentration of chemoattractant. (E) Time spent in the target quadrant (Zone 4) during assay of intact and headless planarians in the uniform-field and chemoattractant gradient-field is shown as mean ± SEM. (F) Mean velocity of intact and headless planarians during assay. ***, p < 0.005; NS, not significant; t = 600 sec; n = 11.