Enhancing insect flight research with a lab-on-cables

High speed visual insect swarm tracker (Hi-VISTA) used to identify the effects of confinement on individual insect flight

Individual insects flying in crowded assemblies perform complex aerial maneuvers by sensing and feeding back neighbor measurements to small changes in their wing motions. To understand the individual feedback rules that permit these fast, adaptive behaviors in group flight, both experimental preparations inducing crowded flight and high-speed tracking systems capable of tracking both body motions and more subtle wing motion changes for multiple insects in simultaneous flight are needed. This measurement capability extends tracking beyond the previous focus on individual insects to multiple insects. This paper describes an experimental preparation that induces crowded insect flight in more naturalistic conditions (a laboratory-outdoor transition tunnel) and directly compares the resulting flight performance to traditional flight enclosures. Measurements are made possible via the introduction of a multi-agent high speed insect tracker called Hi-VISTA, which provides a capability to track wing and body motions of multiple insects using high speed cameras (9000-12 500 fps). Processing steps consist of automatic background identification, data association, hull reconstruction, segmentation, and feature measurement. To improve the biological relevance of laboratory experiments and develop a platform for interaction studies, this paper applies the Hi-VISTA measurement system toApis melliferaforagers habituated to transit flights through the transparent transition environment. Binary statistical analysis (Welch's t-test, Cohen's d effect size) of 95 flight trajectories is presented, quantifying the differences between flights in an unobstructed environment and in a confined tunnel volume. The results indicate that body pitch angle, heading rate, flapping frequency, and vertical speed (heave) are each affected by confinement, and other flight variables show minor or statistically insignificant changes. These results form a baseline as swarm tracking and analysis begins to isolate the effects of neighbors from environmental enclosures, and improve the connection of high speed insect laboratory experiments to outdoor field experiments.