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

ABSTRACT

Servospheres are robotized observation equipments that produce endless fields for behavior observation of wandering animals. This paper first proposes a markerless visual tracking technique for estimation of the position and the heading direction of wandering animals, since existing techniques for servospheres require special markers or do not estimate the heading direction. The proposed markerless visual tracking technique is then integrated with a visual servo controller for a servosphere. The integrated markerless visual servo controller is available for wandering animals whose shapes in the image plane are represented by long bodies and thinner parts than their bodies. This paper demonstrates that the proposed controller is available for ants, crickets, mantises and spiders, while the shapes of their bodies and legs are different from each other.     

A Sex Pheromone in the Desert Tenebrionid Beetle <Emphasis Type="Italic">Parastizopus armaticeps</Emphasis>

Males of the desert beetle Parastizopus armaticeps (Pér.) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) exhibit a characteristic calling behavior that attracts females by raising the tip of the abdomen, exposing the aedeagus, and remaining in this posture for a few seconds while emitting a pheromone. We collected the pheromone by holding a solid phase microextraction fiber (100 mum polydimethylsiloxane) close to the aedeagus for 5 s and analyzed the volatiles collected by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The volatiles consisted of 3-methylphenol (52%), ethyl-1,4-benzoquinone (48%), and 3-ethylphenol (2%). The pheromone originated from the aedeagal glands. In the gland reservoirs, these compounds (2.1%) were mixed with ethyl, isopropyl, and propyl esters of fatty acids (24.2%), and a mixture of hydrocarbons (69.1%). The mean amount of volatiles extracted from gland reservoirs was 0.92 +/- 0.83 microg. Chemo-orientation experiments with a servosphere show that females responded only to the ternary volatile mixture. Females stopped walking, elevated the front parts of their bodies with erected antennae, turned slowly on their own axis, and walked upwind toward the odor source. Single components or binary mixtures did not elicit responses from females. Males did not respond to the pheromone. Evolutionary aspects of this pheromone system are discussed.