With equipment support from TLT and Media Commons, an adjunct professor on campus, Dr. Jorge Santiago-Blay, has been able to continue a research project with several students on the mating habits of flies.
Using StudioCode software (Penn State has a license), ImageJ, and a plug-in called MTrack2, digitized videos of flies can be coded and tracked to analyze their behavior. The project is in the initial stages of digitizing the video files. Next, iMovie is used to auto correct the contrast, and finally, videos will be coded and behavior analyzed. We are learning the tools and working on automating a process. It should be an exciting process and one very valuable for students to see – with lots of opportunities to acquire technical skills and also experience the complexity of the research process from data collection, through analysis and reporting!
