DOI: 10.25405/data.ncl.28903817
title: <b>Data and analysis of mantis head saccades towards targets in response to various cueing conditions</b>

description: Data and R code used to generate analyses and figures for the manuscript <b>Prior cueing affects the saccadic response to targets in the praying mantis </b><b><i>Sphodromantis lineola</i></b> published in the Journal of Experimental Biology in 2025.This aims to analyse the probability and latency of mantis head saccades towards a target depending on cueing conditions and the contrast of a distractor.<br>The R script provided contains the code used to gather, process, analyses and plot the raw data presented in the manuscript.The raw data is contained in the 3 folders from the 3 experiments presented in the paper.In each experimental folder, there are multiple folders, one for each experimental bout of each mantis.Each of these bout folders contains:- An archive which provides the MATLAB toolbox used to run this particular bout.- Hardware info.mat MATLAB file which contains the information about the informatic material used to perform the bout.- params.mat, a file automatically generated by the toolbox which provides the visual parameters used for the bout. For each trial in the bout, it indicates:Column 1: the luminance of the distractor as given to the computer, which can take the values 0.000, 0.071, 0.170, 0.300 or 0.500 which corresponds to Michelson contrasts of 1.000, 0.751, 0.493, 0.250 or 0.000 respectively.Column 2: the side of the cue with a value of 1 when the cue was displayed on the left of the screen and -1 when the cue was displayed on the right of the screen.Column 3: the side of the distractor with a value of 1 indicating the distractor was displayed on the left side of the screen and the target was on the right side of the screen. A value of -1 indicates that the distractor was displayed on the right side of the screen and the target was on the left side.Column 4: the side of the red lens of the 3D glasses with -1 meaning that the red lens was on the right eye and the purple lens was on the left eye of the mantis. 1 means that the red lens was on the left eye and the purple lens was on the right eye. Please note that this column was not always generated in the 4s cue experiment (experiment 1).Column 5: the cue disparity condition with 1 for crossed disparity, 2 for uncrossed disparity, 3 for zero disparity and 4 for the uncued condition.Column 6: Finally, in the offset cue experiment (experiment 3), a last column indicates the side of the offset of the cue with -1 meaning that the cue was offset towards the left and 1 meaning that the cue was offset towards the right.- results_XX.mat, a file created after processing of the experimental videos. It presents the results of the video analysis of the bout performed by XX (initials of the experimenter). It shows for each trial in the bout:Column 1: whether the mantis performed a saccade toward the cue, with 1 when the mantis made a saccade towards the cue and 0 when she did not.Column 2: the number of saccades towards the left stimulus (the stimulus displayed on the left of the screen).Column 3: the number of saccades towards the right stimulus (the stimulus displayed on the right of the screen).Column 4: the number of strikes the mantis attempted towards any stimulus.Column 5: the number of times the mantis presented a tension of its body when the targets were on screen.Modif_results_XX.mat, a file similar to the one above in which we added and column showing the direction of the first saccade. This direction was obtained automatically for trials in which head saccades where only towards one of the two stimuli. For the trials when the mantis performed saccades towards both stimuli, a visual inspection of the video was conducted and the direction of the first saccade was assessed. In this column, -1 indicates that the first saccade was towards the stimulus displayed on the left of the screen, 1 indicates that that it was towards the stimulus displayed on the right of the screen and 0 is for trials without any saccade.<br>- The names of each bout folder give indications about:First, the name of the mantis such as “ASL2JUN19F”.The date when the bout was conducted in the format DD-MM-YYYY.The time of the day when the bout was conducted in format hh.mm.The distance between the mantis and the screen.The disparity condition of the cue (Crossed, Uncrossed, Zero Disparity or Uncued).The replication number (Trial1, Trial2, Trial3 or Trial4) with two replications per cueing disparity condition for each mantis except for one mantis in the experiment 1 (the 4s experiment) which died before her second trials. Trial3 and Trial4 were replications that were conducted in replacement for the Trial1 or Trial2 in which the mantis was not motivated to participate to the bout (did not track any of the stimuli in the bout and also did not respond to the motivational stimulus at the end, please see Material and Methods in the article).Finally, the colour of the filter that was on the left eye of the mantis to form the 3D glasses that we fitted on the animals. Was indicated either BlueLeft for a purple filter on the left eye and a red filter on the right eye, or GreenLeft for a red filter on the left eye and a purple filter on the right eye. The fact that GreenLeft meant a red filter on the left eye and that BlueLeft was for a purple filter on the left eye was an artefact left from previous version of the toolbox coded for green and blue 3D glasses. However, only red or purple filters were used in our experiments.This information was automatically identified and extracted by the R code<br>Regarding saccade latency:- The raw data is kept in the “Mantis Saccade Timing for 4s and 100ms Cue.xlsx” file. This data was manually entered after visually examining all trials that contained a saccade.The first column indicates the name of the video folders from which the R code extracts information about the mantis identity.The second column present the video trial number withing this folder.The third column shows the video frame on which the target appears for each video.The fourth column presents the frame number on which the mantises started their first saccades.The fifth column shows the frame number on which mantises’ first saccade ended.The last column presents the cue duration (i.e. whether the data came from the experiment 1 or 2).The R code, allows to combine the information from this excel file with the information from the compiled saccade direction and to run the analyses on mantises’ latency to perform the first head saccade.