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Illustrating a free, open-source method for quantifying locomotor performance with sprinting Aegean wall lizards

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1 School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
2 Carleton College, Northfield, MN, USA
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.701v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Animal Behavior, Ecology, Evolutionary Studies, Zoology
Keywords
functional biology, locomotion, analytical tools, Podarcis erhardii, sprint speed, lizard
Copyright
© 2014 Donihue et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Donihue C, Kazez B. 2014. Illustrating a free, open-source method for quantifying locomotor performance with sprinting Aegean wall lizards. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e701v1

Abstract

Locomotion is an important characteristic of many animals’ natural history. With the increasing availability of high-speed video cameras, videography is a powerful tool for analyzing fast or subtle motions with unprecedented resolution. However, the programs currently available for analyzing these videos are either dauntingly time intensive or prohibitively expensive. We have developed a free, open-source video analysis program, SAVRA, that enables the quick capture of scaled position data. Here we demonstrate its use with an analysis of several videos of the Aegean wall lizard (Podarcis erhardii). We hope making this program freely available will facilitate the analysis of video data across taxa, not just in laboratory settings but also in natural contexts.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Additional Information

Competing Interests

The authors declare they have no competing interests.

Author Contributions

Colin Donihue conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Ben Kazez contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Animal Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

All procedures involving lizards were approved under Yale IACUC protocol 2013-11548 and by the Greek Ministry of Environment, Energy, and Climate Change (Permit 111665/1669).

Field Study Permissions

The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

The Greek Ministry of Environment, Energy, and Climate Change awarded CMD field permission to conduct this research (Permit 111665/1669).

Funding

The field component of this research was conducted as part of a larger project funded by the National Geographic Society Waitt Grants Program to CMD. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Illustrating a free, open-source method for quantifying locomotor performance with sprinting Aegean wall lizards
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