Buridan’s Paradigm

This video scanning device is used for automatic tracking of a walking fruit fly fly Drosophila during free choice between two visual landmarks. The fly is placed on an elevated platform in the center of the illuminated arena. Shortened wings and a water-filled moat prevent its escape. The position on the circular platform is encoded and stored in a plain text file for later analysis.

Buridan’s paradigm was originally deviced by Götz K.G. (1980: “Visual guidance in Drosophila.” Basic Life Sci. 16: 391-407) in the MPI for Biological Cybernetics.

The software tracking the fly as well as our evaluation algorithms can be downloaded in one convenient package. Using Buridan’s Paradigm, you can quickly and easily test flies for a large range of parameters of their visual and motor capabilities.