Meeting Abstract

P3.102  Wednesday, Jan. 6  Analysis of crawling activity of Tritonia diomedea in light versus dark settings SINGH, G; HUYNH, M; MURRAY, JA*; Cal. State. U. East Bay james.murray@csueastbay.edu

Tritonia diomedea have eyes several mm deep in heads but there is no evidence that light affects their behavior. To test the effects of photoreception on locomotion, the animals were kept in a tank where they were exposed to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark. We tested the animals in two 4 hours trials on alternate days, one trial consisting of IR light only and one under normal light only. The trials were done during the same time of the day on two different days where IR trial is done first day and the light trial is done the next day. The animal’s movements were recorded by a digital camera and the video was analyzed for total time active and net movement for the first one hour. Preliminary results show that on average the slugs were crawling 56% of the time in light and 47% of the time in the dark. When net distance traveled of all subjects were averaged, total distance traveled in the dark was 313 cm in comparison to 699 cm traveled in the light. Tritonia may be more active when in lightened environments.