Meeting Abstract
Predator evasion requires that prey identify a threatening stimulus. Fish rapidly achieve this feat, but it is unclear what features of a visual stimulus succeed in stimulating an escape response. To understand these visual cues, we developed a high-throughput experimental setup that characterizes the responses of a fish to a variety of looming stimuli. This was achieved by triggering a high-speed video camera to record the fish after the presentation of a stimulus that was projected upon the wall of an experimental chamber. Using customized software, the behavior of the fish was quickly determined with an automated kinematic analysis and this result determined the sequence of experiments that were performed. The ability of this setup to generate automated results from a series of experiments on an individual may be applied to characterize the behavioral responses to a variety of stimuli and may thereby provide an indispensable tool for behavioral research.
