Phylogenetic Ethoinformatics: Computers and Phylogenies in Animal Behavior

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

Creating a visual display archive Emilia P. Martins Animal behavior is the one of the most complex phenotypes and that complexity is reflected in the myriad of ways in which it has been measured and recorded by scientific researchers. Even simple storage, access and retrieval of behavioral information presents a difficult problem because of the variety of forms in which behavioral information is preserved and disseminated. Coherent, effective combination of the data to address important questions in animal behavior or for future communication with databases in other fields (e.g., genomics) requires even more effort. Although recent years have seen the creation of several public databases of biological information, there are still relatively few in animal behavior and even fewer which have even begun to address the considerable difficulties of fast, effective interaction among the huge variety of possible behavioral data types. This proposal is to transfer a large existing collection of lizard display footage from decaying 16mm film to electronic form, preserving it for posterity and making it accessible to other researchers. The lizard archive will be organized through a database and metadata tag structure that is sufficiently general to allow for future addition of visual display data from a wide diversity of other species. A series of web pages will be created to illustrate the benefits of such an archive to the biological community.