Regulation of synaptic frequency: comparison of the effects of hypoinnervation with those of hyperinnervation in the fly's compound eye.

At the anterior rim of the first optic neuropile, or lamina, of the housefly's (Musca domestica) compound eye, the terminals of photoreceptors (R) innervate postsynaptic neurons in variable numbers to provide a continuous range of natural hypo- and hyperinnervations. Frequencies of photoreceptor synapses have been measured from quantitative electron microscopy on single sections of the lamina's unit synaptic modules, called cartridges. These are normally innervated by six photoreceptor terminals (6R cartridges). At the lamina's edge hypoinnervated cartridges (2R-5R) are found, whereas hyperinnervated cartridges (7R, 8R) are located at the equator between dorsal and ventral eye halves. In 2R cartridges each presynaptic terminal forms up to 1.5 times the normal, 6R cartridge number of synapses, thereby offsetting the reduced number of terminals and partially conserving the input upon the postsynaptic neurons. Thus the terminals have a reserve synaptogenic capacity never normally revealed. By comparison, terminals in 8R cartridges form about the same numbers of synapses as in "normal" eye regions, so that their postsynaptic neurons have a synaptic input increased by the extra number of terminals. The number of synapses formed between input terminals and target neurons is therefore not fixed but changes as a function of the total receptor terminal complement. The size of a photoreceptor terminal covaries to a certain extent with the number of its presynaptic sites; the spacing density of presynaptic sites over the terminals' surface in a 2R cartridge compared with an 8R cartridge increases far less (only 17%) than the increase in the number of sites (43%). The pair of postsynaptic cell interneurons in each 2R cartridge also shows a decrease in axonal diameter compared with those in 8R cartridges. Thus both the pre- and postsynaptic cells show size changes correlated with changes in their synaptic engagement.