DeepLabCut-based daily behavioural and posture analysis in a cricket

Circadian rhythms are indispensable intrinsic programs that regulate the daily rhythmicity of physiological processes, such as feeding and sleep. The cricket has been employed as a model organism for understanding the neural mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms in insects. However, previous studi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology open 2024-04, Vol.13 (4)
Main Authors: Hayakawa, Shota, Kataoka, Kosuke, Yamamoto, Masanobu, Asahi, Toru, Suzuki, Takeshi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Behavior, Animal
Circadian Rhythm
cricket
Gryllidae - physiology
Locomotion
machine learning
Posture - physiology
posture analysis
Sleep - physiology
sleep-like state
Software
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Summary:Circadian rhythms are indispensable intrinsic programs that regulate the daily rhythmicity of physiological processes, such as feeding and sleep. The cricket has been employed as a model organism for understanding the neural mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms in insects. However, previous studies measuring rhythm-controlled behaviours only analysed locomotive activity using seesaw-type and infrared sensor-based actometers. Meanwhile, advances in deep learning techniques have made it possible to analyse animal behaviour and posture using software that is devoid of human bias and does not require physical tagging of individual animals. Here, we present a system that can simultaneously quantify multiple behaviours in individual crickets - such as locomotor activity, feeding, and sleep-like states - in the long-term, using DeepLabCut, a supervised machine learning-based software for body keypoints labelling. Our system successfully labelled the six body parts of a single cricket with a high level of confidence and produced reliable data showing the diurnal rhythms of multiple behaviours. Our system also enabled the estimation of sleep-like states by focusing on posture, instead of immobility time, which is a conventional parameter. We anticipate that this system will provide an opportunity for simultaneous and automatic prediction of cricket behaviour and posture, facilitating the study of circadian rhythms.
ISSN:2046-6390
2046-6390
DOI:10.1242/bio.060237