Fig 6. Overall coding accuracy (average Fisher information) is higher for the stimulus statistics of the matching distance than for mismatched statistics corresponding to shorter distances from the pheromone source.

(A) The ORNs exposed to the temporal statistics of pheromone plume at the distance of 16 m achieve different coding accuracy in dependence on the pheromone dose (color). The average coding accuracy when the encoding model for 16 m is applied to the correct stimulus-timescale statistics of 16 m (dashed line) is greater than the average coding accuracy of the same encoding model when assuming a mismatched stimulus-timescale statistics at 8 m, for all pheromone doses except 1 ng. (B–D) Analogous results for ORNs adjusted to statistics of other distances (dashed). The coding performance is always best for the matching distance. Virtual distances longer than the matching one could not be applied since the Fisher information is not defined for the whole range of possible blank durations.