Lab study

A laboratory provides a controlled environment that is ideal to investigate behavioral traits in insects. Noldus provides the perfect tool for in-depth behavioral studies: The Observer® XT.

Many insect lab studies concentrate on the influence of synthetic or plant compounds on searching, foraging, and oviposition behavior in pest insect species or enemies of these species. Conducting these experiments in a laboratory environment gives you the ability to manipulate experimental conditions and to establish stock cultures. Insect characteristics that might be of influence on their behavior can be determined including sex, wing size, and physiological status.

 
Don´t miss a thing
When working with insects in a laboratory environment, video recording is easy and practical. Especially when working with multiple insects, highly active insects, or when you want to score behavior in high detail. With The Observer XT, you can use previously recorded video files, or connect a camera directly to your computer and use The Observer XT to acquire a video file. And with a video feed of up to four cameras, you can also look at your insect from multiple angles, allowing you to conduct your studies in great detail.

 
Play back or fast forward
Another advantage of video files is that you can use the flexible playback functions: you can quickly scroll through less interesting parts, or play the video at a lower speed to score certain behaviors more accurately.

 
Get organized
One of the first and essential steps in your research is creating a coding scheme (ethogram). You can define any subject you want to observe and every behavior you are interested in. The Observer XT will help you keep you coding scheme organized. Then start your observations by simply pressing the corresponding key of the keyboard or clicking on the behavior in the coding scheme, while The Observer XT automatically adds the time stamps.

 
Flexible coding scheme
Did you see a behavior that you find interesting, but is not your coding scheme? No problem. The Observer XT allows you to add behaviors at any point you desire. Observations can contain as much or as little detail as you need. You can even link ‘modifiers’ to behaviors to add additional information. For example, when investigating the influence of a compound on feeding behavior, the behavior ‘arrestment on grain’ can be extended with the modifier group ‘infestation of grain’, containing modifier values ‘infested’ and ‘not infested’.

 
Add more information
To add extra information to each observation, you can also define independent variables, such the physiological state or the gender of the insect, or the absence or presence of an odor cue.

 
Collaboration projects
Do you have a lot of video material to analyze, or do you want to score insect behavior in high detail? Then share the workload with other using a multiple coding stations with The Observer XT Coder Licenses. These are cost-effective and limit the use of The Observer XT to scoring and visualization. After all observations are completed, you can easily combine them in your main project with a full license. The Observer XT also performs reliability analysis to exclude observer bias.

 
As much detail as you need
The Observer XT offers different functions to select your data, making it easy to create meaningful comparisons. For instance, compare observations with different experimental conditions when assessing the influence of the odor of a host on searching and oviposition behavior in its parasitoid. Or find out what happened during a certain period of time: you can analyze the frequencies and durations of movement behaviors of the male insect while the female insect is absent. You can use anything from your coding scheme (subject, behaviors, and modifiers) and even independent variable to create you selection.

 
Statistics for analysis
After selection, The Observer XT calculates a wealth of statistics including rates, latencies, durations, and mean values. Visualizing your results in a pie chart or scatter plot will help you to get an immediate feel for your data before and after analysis. You can also create video highlight clips and include them alongside the graphs when presenting your data.