Free Behavior

3D tracking of flying flies.

3D tracking of flying flies.

We quantify locomotor behavior of freely walking and flying flies by videotaping them and extracting movements features using custom-written algorithms in Python. Flies walking on a 2D surface are filmed with a single camera and position as well as posture-related parameters such as body orientation and head angle are being extracted. For flying flies, 3 dimensions have to be taken into account. A calibrated camera system inspired by Straw et al. (2011) is used to obtain 3D position by triangulation. We combine these readouts with visual stimulation as well as (opto-)genetic circuit manipulation. With this approach, we hope to uncover some of the roles of visual neurons in a naturalistic context.

References

Straw AD, Branson K, Neumann TR, Dickinson MH (2011) Multi-camera real-time three-dimensional tracking of multiple flying animals. J R Soc Interface 8(56):395–409.