Radio Frequency Identification en bewegingsgevoelige Video Efficiënt Automatiseer Opname van onbeloond keuzegedrag door Hommels

The overall goals of these procedures are to automate the observation of bee choice behavior at artificial flowers. This is accomplished by first gluing an identification tag on all bees inside a colony with plastic number tags or RFID tags, depending on the protocol. The second step is to set up motion sensitive camcorders or the RFID readers in the testing space.

Next, the artificial flowers a place in the testing space. The final step is to give the B colonies access to the testing space. Ultimately, a large database of records is generated consisting of the time and location of each and every floral visit.

The main advantage of these techniques over other methods, such as recording observations manually in real time, is that these techniques enable us to study the behavior of bees that have never yet experienced rewards on flowers. Bees take time to discover flowers, sometimes even days. Our methods allow us to capture these very rare events.

We can record the activities of an entire colony of bumblebees continuously over an extended period of time, and with high precision. This can help us answer key questions in insect behavior about the origins of individual differences. The testing environment for this protocol must be an isolated room or a two cubic meter metal screen flight cage on the flight cage.

A small hole, the diameter of a nickel or about two centimeters serves as the entry and exit point for the bees.Bee. Colonies are connected to the test space using a conduit that is wide enough to let several bees circulate simultaneously. Screen tube conduits are ideal because they provide good traction during these experiments.

The bees move freely between the flight cage and the colony box via these conduits within the test space are two holders for artificial flower placement. These are 1.2 meter tall wooden stands placed at the center of the space or attached to the wall. The top of the stand has a mechanism that serves to hold the flowers.

Throughout the experiment, the locations of the holders are moved periodically to prevent position effect artifacts from being introduced. While RFID experiments, A 2K six head is installed on top of a custom designed artificial flower for color tag experiments. Motion sensitive camcorders are placed two meters from the artificial flowers.

The testing space is illuminated by fluorescent lights generating a minimum of 1, 200 lux of intensity because the bees can detect the flicker of ordinary fluorescent lights, specialized high frequency ballasts flickering at over 200 hertz must be used during the experiment. Workers are tagged on the thorax with RFID tags elect the workers into individual containers when they emerge from their cocoons and while they're still in their callow stage and unable to fly, call them down for about an hour in a refrigerator set to seven degrees Celsius. This will minimize the chance of being stung during tagging.

Once chilled, apply a unique RFID tag to each worker using non-toxic glue. Let the glue dry for at least 10 minutes before reintroducing the worker to the colony. All workers that evade tagging or have lost their RFID must be removed.

When the experiment artificial flower constructs can be made by a machine shop, they're then lined with color clay. A plain blue artificial flower is the basic template onto which different visual features are added. One visual feature is a design using a thin lining of yellow clay.

The slot on the cylindrical portion of the artificial flower easily snaps onto the RFID reader. The design of the flower stimulus is crucial. The interior space must be large enough that all bumble piece can climb inside, but small enough that the tag on the bumblebee comes within three to four millimeters of the reader.

Furthermore, the artificial flower must be designed to display visual properties in such a way that there's no disruption between the cylinder and the coon portions. An alternative to RFID tags are colored number tags. These tags are also applied to worker bees shortly after they emerge from their cocoons.

One advantage over the RFID tags is that they are more difficult for the bees to dislodge. As with RFID tagging, remove all the workers from the colony and call them prior to tagging.Later. Once the experiment has started and the bee behavior is being recorded, new workers will emerge and need to be tagged.

Typically, seven to 10 new workers emerge every two to three days to record data of color tagged bees. Motion sensitive video cameras must be aimed at each flower from outside the testing environment. These can be internet protocol cameras with at least one megapixel of resolution and light modification.

Replace the stock lens with a 1.8 millimeter very focal lens to provide better focus and the capacity to zoom in onto the flower. Focus another camera to capture the area in front of the two flowers. This camera is positioned about half a meter above the flowers.

It captures the behaviors that occur before landing, which include approach hovering and even intonating. A colony of 375 workers was tagged with RFIDs. 85%entered the flight cage during the study, and 62%of those bees also explored one of four flower stimuli.

This was scored as hovering over Intonating landing on and exploring. The experiment produced about 300, 000 recorded events, which were all stored in a mice world database. There was a preference shown for a radial pattern over a concentric pattern.

The radial pattern reversed, however, when the concentric pattern was positioned at the center of the flower and the radial pattern was peripheral. In a second experiment, bees were tagged with colored numbers and filmed with motion sensitive camcorders. In this experiment, there was a preference for centrally positioned radial pattern flowers over centrally positioned concentric pattern.Flowers.

Position of a pattern on the flower did not make a difference. These procedures allow us to empirically test theoretical predictions offered by computational modeling and artificial intelligence about the characteristics of visual information processing by small brains. For example, unsupervised neural networks were used to generate predictions regarding preferences for symmetry, which we tested using our automated methods.

The behavior of bumblebees leaving their colony for the very first time is a neglected area of study, and some of the obstacles to research have been methodological. The techniques that we have described in this video are particularly well suited for studying the behavior of bumblebees that are leaving their colony and searching for food for the very first time.RFID. Tagging and motion sensitive video recordings are presently being used by psychologists and by biologists to study new questions that until recently have been out of reach.