LOGGING LEG USE: Drosophila melanogaster with pieces of fluorescent polymer attached to each of its legs. These dye spots, each only 100 microns across, glow infrared when illuminated with red light and allow real-time tracking of leg position.DE BIVORT LABThe dynamics inside any fruit fly room are as riveting as a reality TV show. Some Drosophila strains are bullies, while others are just out to mate; some spend more time chowing down; and some are more dedicated to grooming themselves. A decade ago, studying these complex behavioral dynamics was a tedious task, requiring hours spent watching fuzzy videos of flies being flies, jotting down their every action and the time it occurred.
“The problem was that, not only was this prohibitively time-consuming and mindless, but the behaviors were fairly subjective and people would categorize them differently,” says biologist Benjamin de Bivort of Harvard University.
Now, that’s all changing. With the plummeting cost and rising quality of high-definition cameras, sensors, and machine-learning programs, biologists are using computers or touchpads to automate the detection of fly behaviors, from grooming to mating—even detecting how often they eat. Today, such methods are so sensitive that they can reveal the individual motion of each of the six legs of a Drosophila.
“There’s a revolution happening in behavioral neuroscience that comes about because of all these cheap sensors designed for phones and personal electronics,” says de Bivort.
These new techniques are giving scientists ...
