title: Detailed tracking of body and leg movements of a freely walking female cricket during phonotaxis.
abstract: We describe a semi-automated tracking system for insect motion based on commercially available high-speed video cameras and freely available software. We use it to collect detailed three-dimensional kinematic information from female crickets performing free walking phonotaxis towards a calling song stimulus. We mark the insect's joints with small dots of paint and record the movements from underneath with a pair of cameras following the insect as it walks on the transparent floor of an arena. Tracking is done offline, utilizing a kinematic model to constrain the processing. We can obtain the positions and angles of all joints of all legs and six additional body joints, synchronised with stance-swing transitions and the sound pattern, at a 300 Hz frame rate. This data will be used in the further development of models of neural control of phonotaxis.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, UK. G.Petrou-2@sms.ed.ac.uk
authors.forename: Georgios
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Petrou
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Webb
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D005260:Female; D006135:Gryllidae / Q000502:physiology*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D035002:Lower Extremity / Q000502:physiology*; D012984:Software; D014741:Video Recording / Q000379:methods*; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology*