Worm Behavior Platform

;In Nature Methods, Avelino Javer and colleagues developed and shared an open-source platform for analyzing and sharing worm behavioral data.

Collecting behavioral data is important and analyzing this data is just as crucial. Sharing this data is also important because it can further our understanding of behavior and increase replicability of worm behavioral studies. This is achieved by allowing many scientists to re-analyze available data, as well as develop new methods for analysis. Javer and colleagues developed an open resource in an effort to streamline the steps involved in this process — from storing and accessing video files to creating software to read and analyze the data. This platform features: an open-access repository for storing, accessing, and filtering data; an interchange format for notating single or multi-worm behavior; and file formats written in Python for feature extraction, review, and analysis. Together, these tools serve as an accessible suite for quantitative behavior analysis that can be used by experimentalists and computational scientists alike.

This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications.  Project portal RRID:SCR_021420; Software RRID:SCR_021501