Fig. 2: Food and temperature-dependent behavioral states underly different navigation strategies with different food seeking and thermoregulatory performances.

One-minute worm trajectories recorded in isothermal environments (35 for each condition) and plotted from a single starting (0, 0) coordinate (a). Enlarged representation for worms in dwelling and scanning (inset). Average ± s.e.m. and individual data points for animal displacement (b), corresponding to how far animals moved from their starting point and covered distance (c), corresponding to the path length. n = 30 animals. *p < 0.05 and **p < 0.01 versus 15 °C Fed condition, #p < 0.05 and ##, p < 0.01 versus the indicated control by Bonferroni posthoc tests. On-food thermotaxis assay in fed animals revealing a faster thermotactic movement toward recent growth temperature in scanning animals (6 h after warming) as compared to dwelling animals held at 25 °C (d, e, f). Schematic of the assay unfolding (d), overlayed worm positions over multiple assays (e), on-food thermotaxis index time course (average ± s.e.m., f). n = 10 assays per condition. Food drop assay in which starved animals in glocal search mode at 25 °C perform better than animals in global search mode at 15 °C (g, h, i). Schematic of the assay unfolding (g), overlayed worm positions over multiple assays (h), time course of the fraction of successful worms (average ± s.e.m., n = 9 independent assays, (i)). ##p < 0.01 versus the other condition at the same time point, by Bonferroni posthoc tests. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.