Behavior at High Resolution

Abstract

The physics of animal behavior is at an exciting time where an explosion of new computational tools and techniques is giving us access to unprecedented amounts of high quality data. With these superior data, we can probe long standing questions in the physics behavior about the temporal structure of behavior, the impact of biological factors on behavior, and how internal state and external context modulate behavior. Here I present two projects that take advantage of the opportunities created by these advances to examine behavior at high resolution. An ongoing area of interest in the physics of behavior is the temporal structure of animal behavior. Progress has been limited by the availability of long timescale data sets. We set out to provide a new high resolution \textit{Drosophila melanogaster} data set as a resource to the field of the physics of behavior. We developed a methodology to capture and process high resolution, high frame rate, continuous recordings of freely behaving \textit{Drosophila melanogaster} over the course of 4-7 days of life. Our data captures well known behavior effects, such as habituation to new environments and circadian rhythms of locomotion. This data set will provide a foundation upon which the field can build our next generation of computational and analytical advances. We also leverage the tools of computational ethology to quantify and study bumblebee social behaviors. We perturbed the early life social environment of \textit{Bombus impatiens} by isolating them from their natal colony during a critical brain development period. We then assayed their behaviors both alone and in pairs. We found that isolation altered behavioral biases in solo social contexts. We also found significant perturbations to social behaviors, including altered reactions to proximity with a social partner and a loss of specificity in antennation behaviors. This, in combination with the neurogenomic effects found by our collaborators, shows that early life social isolation has a significant effect on neurogenomic development and later solo and social behaviors.