Conserved trajectories of age-related thigmotaxis across insects and mammals reveal the house cricket as a scalable model for behavioral aging.

Abstract

Age-related cognitive and exploratory decline is a hallmark of brain aging across species, yet the evolutionary conservation of specific behavioral phenotypes remains unresolved. Thigmotaxis, the wall-following preference in open-field exploration, serves as a robust index of anxiety and cognitive vulnerability in humans and rodent models of aging and neurodegeneration. Here, we report that house crickets (Acheta domesticus) exhibit steep age-related increases in thigmotaxis, mirroring trajectories observed in C57BL/6 J mice, while CB6F1 hybrids remain resistant. Using lifespan- and maturity-normalized age metrics, we show that these patterns are robust across alternative scaling frameworks and independent of body size or sex. The conservation of exploratory decline across insects and mammals suggests that thigmotaxis reflects fundamental, evolutionarily ancient neurobehavioral processes of aging. Importantly, house crickets provide practical advantages (i.e., short lifespan, low cost, and responsiveness to established geroprotective drugs) positioning them as a powerful bridge model for scalable screening of interventions targeting age-related cognitive and behavioral decline.