Advances in Our Understanding of Locomotory Behavioural Response of Teratorhabditis Palmarum Nematode

Abstract

AbstractLocomotion is essential to most living organisms. The nematode Teratorhabditis palmarum (Gerber & Giblin-Davis, 1990), must be able to accommodate its locomotory gait to its physical environment. Particularly, when crawl on a solid surface, it shows forward movement as the contraction waves propagates from anterior to the posterior region. In the present study, we analyzed the locomotory behavior of T. palmarum on agar by using computational worm-tracking system and mathematical tools. Our tracking system was made to assist worms that travel a vast area with recurrent turns and reversals at high speeds. The locomotory parameters studied were velocity, wavelength, amplitude, angle of bending, curvature map, forward, reversal, omega and pause that was extracted from a two min video recording. Here, we examined the locomotory behaviour (movement and wave characteristic) of two, six and ten days old nematodes. In movement characteristic, except pause which increases; forward wave, backward wave and omega wave decrease significantly. In wave characteristic, wavelength and amplitude increase while average velocity and bending angle decrease significantly. Locomotion was observed between various age groups and it was concluded that as animals aged, mild locomotory deficits appeared that were enough to reduce behavioral activity. This study is important in controlling nematode, which causes the diseases especially Plant parasitic nematodes, which affects the agricultural crops and we easily manage to control the population.