


Many insects, including Hymenopterans ( e.g., honey bees and bumblebees), Lepidopterans ( e.g., butterflies), and Dipterans ( e.g., flies and mosquitoes), among others, feed by extending their proboscis 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. This modulation facilitates actively informed behavioral responses to odors and their plumes 12, 13. The insects can adjust antennae positions to modulate information about incoming odors 4, 10, 11. In insects, the antennae contain sensory receptors that bind to chemical volatiles 4, 5, 6 and transmit this signal via olfactory sensory neurons to central brain regions 1, 7, 8, 9. The animals can use the antennae to navigate their environment by detecting sensory cues such as chemical volatiles and gustatory and mechanical stimuli 1, 2, 3, 4. Most arthropods move antennae or other appendage to sample environmental cues and signals in time and space. We observed antenna position density heat map cluster formation and cluster and mean angle dependence on odor concentration.
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The software was used to track the antennal response of honey bees to two odors and found significant mean antennal retractions away from the odor source about 1 s after odor presentation. The software processes frames about 120 times faster than humans, performs at better than human accuracy, and, using 30 frames per second (fps) videos, can capture antennal dynamics up to 15 Hz. By extending our previous work on assessing aggregate insect swarm or animal group movements from natural and laboratory videos using the video analysis software SwarmSight, we developed a novel, free, and open-source software module, SwarmSight Appendage Tracking () for frame-by-frame tracking of insect antenna and proboscis positions from conventional web camera videos using conventional computers. The ability to rapidly obtain high-resolution measurements of natural antenna and proboscis movements and assess how they change in response to chemical, developmental, and genetic manipulations can aid the understanding of insect behavior. Many scientifically and agriculturally important insects use antennae to detect the presence of volatile chemical compounds and extend their proboscis during feeding.
