Due to Covid-19, many university lab practicals will no longer be allowed to go ahead. A few lecturers have been in touch to ask whether we have video data to assist in preparing teaching materials for lab practicals. We, therefore, have made available some video and corresponding data which we hope will be useful.
Listed below are the teaching materials we have so far and potential learning outcomes. The learning outcomes are broad with the aim that the materials could be adapted to fit with your curriculum. We hope to add more in the near future.
These teaching materials are being provided for free by Zantiks Ltd. Please email us on info@zantiks.com if you wish to be provided with access to the full data and video footage.
Mosquito startle behaviour
Data on vertical zone use and startle response to vibration stimuli with mosquito larvae
Mosquito larvae resonding to a vibrational startle in the Zantiks MWP unit
Potential learning outcomes:
- To gain understanding of vertical distribution in aquatic organisms
- To gain understanding of the startle response or startle reflex in animals
- To gain understanding of habituation to stimuli (or lack of) and discuss how this may help or hinder ecological processes
- To gain practical experience in coding animal behaviours from video data
- To gain experience in handling large data sets from automatically generated behavioural data
- To compare and contrast manual versus automatically generated behavioural data and understand the pros and cons of both methods
- To understand how to apply appropriate statistical analysis to a dataset
- To understand the importance of generating baseline data on animal behaviours
Drosophila activity in response to varying temperature
Data on activity and startle response to light stimuli at varying temperatures in an invertebrate ectotherm
NOTE: This data has since been made into a full lab practical by The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) in collaboration with the University of Portsmouth. If you do not wish to write up your own lab practical you can find the ASAB published one here
Adult Drosophila responding to a 15 ms light off stimulus in the Zantiks MWP unit
Potential learning outcomes:
- To gain understanding of how temperature affects animal physiology and behaviour
- To gain understanding of the startle response or startle reflex in animals
- To gain practical experience in measuring animal behaviours from video data
- To gain experience in handling large data sets from automatically generated behavioural data
- To compare and contrast manual versus automatically generated behavioural data and understand the pros and cons of both methods
- To understand how to apply appropriate statistical analysis to a dataset
- To understand potential for human bias by comparing data from blind versus not-blind recording
Ecotoxicology experiment with Daphnia spp.
Immobility and activity data for Daphnia spp. exposed to concentrations of copper sulphate
Activity of Daphnia spp. exposed to Copper Sulphate
Potential learning outcomes:
- To gain understanding of ecotoxicology & setting environmental quality standards
- To gain understanding of how environmental pollution can impact animal behaviour
- To gain practical experience in measuring animal behaviours from video data
- To gain experience in handling large data sets from automatically generated behavioural data
- To compare and contrast manual versus automatically generated behavioural data and understand the pros and cons of both methods
- To understand how to apply appropriate statistical analysis to a dataset
- To understand how to generate an EC50 from experimental data
- To discuss potential benefits of using automatically generated behavioural data in standardised toxicity screening over traditional methods
If you're a Zantiks user who would like make one of your experiments available for others to use in practicals please do be in touch, and we can probably arrange to make it available here.
