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The<jats:italic>Caenorhabditis elegans<\/jats:italic>male uses 18 ray sensilla of the tail to coordinate mate apposition behavior, which facilitates a systematic search of the hermaphrodite surface for the vulva. Precisely how ray neuron types, A and B, robustly endow the male with a high degree of spatial and temporal precision is unknown. We show that the appositional postures that drive the search trajectory reflect the complex interplay of ray neuron type-induced motor outputs. Cell-type-specific ablations reveal that the A-neurons are required for all appositional postures. Their activity is instructive because the A-neurons can induce scanning- and turning-like appositional postures when artificially activated with channelrhodopsin (ChR2). B-neurons are essential only for initiation of the behavior in which they enhance male responsiveness to hermaphrodite contact. When artificially activated using ChR2, A- and B-neurons produce different tail ventral curl postures. However, when coactivated, A-neuron posture dominates, limiting B-neuron contributions to initiation or subsequent postures. Significantly, males lacking the majority of rays retain a high degree of postural control, indicating significant functional resilience in the system. Furthermore, eliminating a large number of male-specific ray neuron targets only partially attenuates tail posture control revealing that gender-common cells make an important contribution to the behavior. Thus, robustness may be a crucial feature of circuits underlying complex behaviors, such as mating, even in simple animals.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1523\/jneurosci.6153-10.2011","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2011,5,18]],"date-time":"2011-05-18T16:53:15Z","timestamp":1305737595000},"page":"7497-7510","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":56,"title":["The Robustness of<i>Caenorhabditis elegans<\/i>Male Mating Behavior Depends on the Distributed Properties of Ray Sensory Neurons and Their Output through Core and Male-Specific Targets"],"prefix":"10.1523","volume":"31","author":[{"given":"Pamela K.","family":"Koo","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xuelin","family":"Bian","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Amrita 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