Markerless visual servo control of a servosphere for behavior observation of a variety of wandering animals

Novel use of a servosphere to study apodous insects: Investigation of blow fly post-feeding larval dispersal

Blow flies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) are arguably the most important providers of an estimate of minimum post-mortem interval in forensic investigations. They usually undergo a post-feeding dispersal from the body. While previous studies have looked at dispersal of groups of larvae, recording the dispersal activity of individual larvae has not previously been demonstrated. A servosphere was used here to record the speed, directionality and phototaxis of individual post-feeding larvae of two species of blow fly on a smooth plastic surface over time. The servosphere rotates to compensate for the movement of an insect placed at its apex, thereby enabling its unimpeded locomotion in any direction to be studied and behavioural changes to external stimuli recorded. To our knowledge, the servosphere has not previously been used to study apodous insects. The objective of our study was to compare dispersal behaviour of Calliphora vicina Robineau-Desvoidy and Protophormia terraenovae (Robineau-Desvoidy), both common primary colonisers of human and animal cadavers, but showing different post-feeding dispersal strategies. Larvae of C. vicina generally disperse from the body while those of P. terraenovae remain on or close to the body. Our aims were to study (1) changes in dispersal speed over a 1-h period; (2) changes in dispersal speed once a day for 4 days, between the end of feeding and onset of pupariation; and (3) response of dispersing larvae to light. We demonstrated that (1) the movement of three C. vicina larvae tracked for 1 continuous hour on 1 day slowed from an average of 3 to <1.7 mms-1; (2) the average speed of 20 larvae of C. vicina (4.08 mms-1) recorded for 5 min once per day over a 4-day period between onset of dispersal and pupariation was significantly greater than that of P. terraenovae (2.36 mms-1; p < 0.0001), but that speed of both species increased slightly over the 4 days; (3) the responses of larvae of C. vicina to changes in light direction from the four cardinal directions of the compass, showed that they exhibited a strong negative phototactic response within 5 s, turning to move at approximately 180° away from the new light position. While conducted to observe larval calliphorid post-feeding behaviour, the results of this proof of concept study show that apodous insects can be studied on a servosphere to produce both qualitative and quantitative data.

Motor state changes escape behavior of crickets

Animals change their behavior depending on external circumstances, internal factors, and their interactions. Locomotion state is a crucial internal factor that profoundly affects sensory perception and behavior. However, studying the behavioral impacts of locomotion state in free-moving animals has been challenging due to difficulty in reproducing quantitatively identical stimuli in freely moving animals. We utilized a closed-loop controlled servosphere treadmill system, enabling unrestricted confinement and orientation of small animals, and investigated wind-induced escape behavior in freely moving crickets. When stimulated during locomotion, the crickets quickly stopped before initiating escape behavior. Moving crickets exhibited a higher probability of escape response compared to stationary crickets. The threshold for pausing response in moving crickets was also much lower than the escape response threshold. Moving crickets had delayed reaction times for escape and greater variance in movement direction compared to stationary crickets. The locomotion-related response delay may be compensated by an elevated sensitivity to airflow.

Persistence of auditory modulation of wind-induced escape behavior in crickets

Animals, including insects, change their innate escape behavior triggered by a specific threat stimulus depending on the environmental context to survive adaptively the predators' attack. This indicates that additional inputs from sensory organs of different modalities indicating surrounding conditions could affect the neuronal circuit responsible for the escape behavior. Field crickets, Gryllus bimaculatus, exhibit an oriented running or jumping escape in response to short air puff detected by the abdominal mechanosensory organ called cerci. Crickets also receive a high-frequency acoustic stimulus by their tympanal organs on their frontal legs, which suggests approaching bats as a predator. We have reported that the crickets modulate their wind-elicited escape running in the moving direction when they are exposed to an acoustic stimulus preceded by the air puff. However, it remains unclear how long the effects of auditory inputs indicating surrounding contexts last after the sound is terminated. In this study, we applied a short pulse (200 ms) of 15-kHz pure tone to the crickets in various intervals before the air-puff stimulus. The sound given 200 or 1000 ms before the air puff biased the wind-elicited escape running backward, like the previous studies using the longer and overlapped sound. But the sounds that started 2000 ms before and simultaneously with the air puff had little effect. In addition, the jumping probability was higher only when the delay of air puff to the sound was 1000 ms. These results suggest that the cricket could retain the auditory memory for at least one second and alter the motion choice and direction of the wind-elicited escape behavior.

Navigation and orientation in Coleoptera: a review of strategies and mechanisms

Spatial orientation is important for animals to forage, mate, migrate, and escape certain threats, and can require simple to complex cognitive abilities and behaviours. As these behaviours are more difficult to experimentally test in vertebrates, considerable research has focussed on investigating spatial orientation in insects. However, the majority of insect spatial orientation research tends to focus on a few taxa of interest, especially social insects. Beetles present an interesting insect group to study in this respect, due to their diverse taxonomy and biology, and prevalence as agricultural pests. In this article, I review research on beetle spatial orientation. Then, I use this synthesis to discuss mechanisms beetles employ in the context of different behaviours that require orientation or navigation. I conclude by discussing two future avenues for behavioural research on this topic, which could lead to more robust conclusions on how species in this diverse order are able to traverse through a wide variety of environments.