2021 Volume 38 Issue 2 Pages 87-94
Behavioral analysis plays an important role and is frequently performed in biological sciences. However, in the fields of comparative biology, researchers tend to perform manual video-recording and behavioral annotation, which are laborious and take much time. Unlike the situation of model species, it is often difficult to apply the automated behavioral recording/analysis systems for nonmodel animals, since they are exclusively designed for certain model species and/or behavior. In addition, manual operations can generate unintentional human operational errors, and it is difficult to keep the analysis in good quality. To solve the problem, we established an opensource behavioral recording system using Raspberry Pi, which automatically performs video-recording and systematic file-sorting, and the behavioral recording without unintentional human errors. We also developed an Excel macro for behavioral annotation, which enables us to easily perform behavioral annotation with simple manipulation. This tool enables us to perform the efficient and informative behavioral analysis compared with conventional manual annotation. Thus, we succeeded in developing an analysis suite that may help all researchers performing behavioral analyses using any species. By using this suite, we analyzed the sexual behavior of a laboratory and a wild medaka strain and found a difference in sexual motivation perhaps resulted from domestication.
