The movement tracks of aquatic insects were computationally analyzed to reveal behavioral changes in movement after the treatments of an insecticide at low concentration. Chironomus riparius larvae were individually placed in an observation cage, and the movement tracks in two dimensions were continuously observed through image processing systems for 5 days (2 days before treatment; 3 days after treatment) with the treatments of Diazinon at 0.001 mg/L. The fractal dimension and the spatial auto-correlation function with time lag were calculated to characterize the movement tracks. Fractal dimensions appeared to be decreased in the movement tracks after the treatments. The spatial autocorrelations also showed different patterns. While the spatial correlations smoothly decayed as time progressed before the treatments, the additional flat region was characteristically observed after the treatments. The possibility of using fractal dimension and spatial correlation as a behavioral monitoring tool was further discussed.
Species 1: Diptera Chironomidae Chironomus riparius (midge)
Keywords: computational behavior, behavioral monitoring
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