Event Abstract Back to Event Closed loop visual guidance of prey pursuit by tiger beetles Andreas Haselsteiner1, Cole Gilbert2* and Jane Wang1 1 Cornell University, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, United States 2 Cornell university, Entomology, United States Tiger beetles perform visually-guided pursuit of prey, but run so fast that the prey image suffers too much motion blur and lacks enough contrast for the guidance system. The beetle must stop 3-4 times during pursuit before capturing the prey. When chasing high-contrast prey dummies, however, beetles are able to chase prey continuously under closed-loop control. To investigate the control law governing this behavior, we filmed tiger beetles, Cicindela hirticollis (Carabidae), at 250 fps as they pursued a high-contrast dummy prey (4.5mm diam) in an arena, analyzed the pursuits for correlations between parameters of the prey image and the beetle’s locomotion, and performed simulations of relationships derived from the analysis. The beetles run with a mean linear velocity of 30 cm/s at a step frequency of 18 Hz (56 ms step period) using a typical alternating tripod gait. During straight runs there are brief times when all six legs are simultaneously in the swing phase. The control law is proportional navigation with angular position of the prey image driving the beetle’s angular velocity by a factor k of 12 with a lag of 28 ms. This factor provides almost optimal damping for a control system with this lag, which would be achieved by a k of 13.1. We investigated whether the beetle might also use information about the velocity of the prey image in addition to its position. Although we found a positive correlation, mixed control laws with similar or different lags for the position and velocity terms produced only slight improvement in the pursuit simulations. Thus, we conclude that the simple position-driven relationship adequately describes the beetle’s pursuit control system, as has been found in other pursuing insects, such as flies. Keywords: insect, Vision Conference: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation (see alternatives below as well) Topic: Sensorimotor Integration Citation: Haselsteiner A, Gilbert C and Wang J (2012). Closed loop visual guidance of prey pursuit by tiger beetles. Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00293 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 30 Apr 2012; Published Online: 07 Jul 2012. * Correspondence: Dr. Cole Gilbert, Cornell university, Entomology, Ithaca, NY, 14853, United States, cg23@cornell.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Andreas Haselsteiner Cole Gilbert Jane Wang Google Andreas Haselsteiner Cole Gilbert Jane Wang Google Scholar Andreas Haselsteiner Cole Gilbert Jane Wang PubMed Andreas Haselsteiner Cole Gilbert Jane Wang Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.