Large Field of View, High Resolution Multi Worm Tracker

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This application is for funds to build a tracking system that will electronically track the behaviour of a large number of microscopic organisms at the same time. This will allow researchers to study more animals in greater detail and in a shorter time period than existing methods. Understanding the behaviour in more detail greatly facilitates investigations of neural and genetic mechanisms of behaviour. The camera we are requesting has a much larger field of view at a high resolution than our existing set-ups. This will allow us to study both smaller and larger animals than we are currently using. This means that in addition to studying the behaviour of a microscopic nematode worm, we will be able to study Drosophila larvae and frog tadpoles. This work will allow us to expand our collaborations with researchers at UBC, and at a number of universities in Canada and in the United States. This, in turn, will increase the training opportunities in my lab for both graduate students and undergraduate students. Graduate students will benefit from the interdisciplinary nature of the collaborations, while undergraduates will get opportunities to collect original data and experience a research project from beginning to end. For the graduate students the collaborations offer them insights into how other types of problems are studied and often gives them new "tool" or techniques that they can apply in their own work. This type of experience allows undergraduates to decide if they wish to pursue research as a career, or not. For students going on to other professions such as medicine, dentistry and speech pathology, the research experience offers them an understanding of how research is done and a way to interpret the scientific studies underlying their applied professions.