DOI: 10.5061/dryad.sxksn030t
title: Tactile active sensing in an insect-plant pollinator

description: The interaction between insects and the flowers they pollinate has driven
 the evolutionary diversity of both insects and flowering plants, two
 groups with the most numerous species on Earth. Insects use vision and
 olfaction to localize host plants, but we know relatively little about how
 they find the tiny nectary opening in the flower, which can be well beyond
 their visual resolution. Especially when vision is limited, touch becomes
 crucial in successful insect–plant pollination interactions. Here, we
 studied the remarkable feeding behavior of crepuscular hawkmoths Manduca
 sexta, which use their long, actively controlled, proboscis to expertly
 explore flower-like surfaces. Using machine vision and 3D-printed
 artificial flower-like feeders, we revealed a novel behavior that shows
 moths actively probe surfaces, sweeping their proboscis from the feeder
 edge to its center repeatedly until they locate the nectary opening.
 Moreover, naive moths rapidly learn to exploit these flowers, and they
 adopt a tactile search strategy to more directly locate the nectary
 opening in as few as three to five consecutive visits. Our results
 highlight the proboscis as a unique active sensory structure and emphasize
 the central role of touch in nectar foraging insect–plant pollinator
 interactions.
description: This
 dataset contains data analyzed from videos of moths feeding from
 artificial flowers and has analysis files for both moth learning (Fig 2)
 and proboscis sweeping (Fig 3 and 4). Organization of
 files and folders 
 DLCdataSet dlcTrainingData
 Each folder contains 1) images (*.png) from each video and 2)
 the corresponding annotation files (*.csv) for 7 different bodyparts
 (Butt, flowerCenter, head, LeftAntennae, RightAntennae, proboscisJoint and
 ProboscisTip).    
 DLCdataSet Output
 contains a folder titled "EntireDataSet" that contains
 *.h5 and *.pickle files exported by DeepLabCut tracking for all the videos
 in the dataset. For each bodypart there is a x,y position and a likelihood
 parameter.  
 MothLearning_dataFolders
 DLCtrackingResults Files include *.csv that
 were used to compare the learning data from a subset of videos that were
 manually annoted and dlc-tracked. These also contain manual annotations
 that were used to build the SVM classifier for classifying true/false
 visits.  
 MothLearning_dataFolders Output
 contains folders titled Step*_* that follow directly
 from the name of codes in  github
 respository: https://github.com/TanviDeora/MothLearning.
 These files contain 1) *.csv files that specify x,y position of
 moth centroid computed from videos and 2) *.mat files from synchronized
 motion sensor in the flower nectary. These folders contain all the data
 needed to create Fig. 2 and the associated statistics. 
 
 ProboscisTracking_dataFolders
 CircleParameters contains 1) a
 single video frame (*.png) with the overhead view of the flower for all
 videos included in the dataset and 2) a file titled
 "circle_parameters.csv" that has x,y location and the flower
 radius for each video. These files are used to
 transform the probsocis tracks from global to flower centric coordinates
 as well as convert x,y pixel position to cm.  
 ProboscisTracking_dataFolders
 v3 This folders contains all the
 analysis output using the codes in the repository
 - https://github.com/TanviDeora/ProboscisTracking. The
 folders are: 1. Raw tracks - *.csv files for each moth
 containing raw tracks (x,y position) of proboscis tip as exported by the
 DeepLabCut for all relevant visits. 2. Fitered tracks -
 *.csv files for each moth containing filtered tracks of proboscis tip for
 all relevant visits, incuding the ones that were manually tracked. The
 data in the folder titled "FinalCompiledTracks" contains the x,y
 positions for all visits that were used for all downstream
 analysis. 3. OtherBodyparts - *.csv files containing
 x,y position of other body parts. The first visit for only a subset of
 moth videos were analyzed. Files includes 1.*mothName*_*bodyPart*.csv for
 each bodyPart that was analyzed and 2.*mothName*_probHeadAngle.csv and
 3.*mothName*_ProbHeadAntennae.csv. 4. RadiusAndAngle -
 *.csv files for each moth containing x, y position for the proboscis tip
 in the flower centric coordinates as well as the relative radial angle and
 relative radial position. These are used to generate Fig.3 and Fig. 4 for
 the associated paper.  5. SweepDynamics*.csv files
 contains different parameters of proboscis sweeping.