Micro Locomotion Compensator : an instrument to analyze the orientation behavior of mites and other tiny animals

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Micro Locomotion Compensator is a powerful instrument to record and analyze the orientation behavior of tiny animals such as mites. It consists of a positioning system with a stage driven by a pair of motorized-slides, a video tracker with a microscopic lens and a personal computer system. The video tracker captures the image of a mite walking on the stage, and then periodically reports its positional data to the computer to bring back the mite to the image center. As a result very slow movement of a mite under 1.0 mm / s can be precisely recorded while it is walking freely on the stage at the same spatial point. The purpose of this project is to prove the micro locomotion compensator.In the first year of this project, we built the positioning system and examined how it works. Although slides of the system use micro-stepping motors, the old computer system, having been used for a servosphere, could not drive them without vibration. Thus we developed a new control system, which can drive the slides in good performance on a standard IBM-PC. After being ported to the PC system, the driver program controlled the slides smoothly enough to trace the mite, Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus, walking at 0.2 - 0.3 mm / s. The displacement of the mite is at almost constant velocity. The mite halted and changed orientation while it is being exposed to pheromonally odored air with geranial : mite's aggregation pheromone. These results will be published after the corresponding orientation mechanism being clarified in a guiding experiment to a virtual odor source.