Behavioral Ecology Laboratory

The Behavioral Ecology Group, founded and supervised by Yılmaz ÇAMLITEPE, continues its studies both in natural environment and laboratory conditions. The group has a Behavioral Ecology Laboratory established in the Biology Department. Behavioral ecology laboratory consists of special experiment rooms designed for different experimental problems and a climate room where living organisms used in experiments are kept alive. In the laboratory, there are a wide variety of machinery-equipment that enables the continuation of studies on the magnetic sensitivities, color vision systems, eye optics, visual information usage, and taste systems of different ant species selected as the test group.

In the climate room where controlled conditions are provided, different ant species are actively kept alive and used in experiments 12 months of the year. There are light cabins that provide illumination conditions close to daylight in the light cabin and animal tracking room, Y-mazes designed by our group and produced by MAY Animal Behavior Systems, and the Ethovision XT Animal Tracking system. Light boxes and Y-mazes are used in experiments investigating the ability of ants to learn and use visual information. With the Ethovision XT animal tracking system, the behavior of ants in an experimental condition is transferred to the digital environment and analyzed. The dark room is the section where color vision studies are carried out using specially designed light boxes and colored filters with narrow band gaps, which are frequently used in color vision studies. There is also an RPS-900 model spectroradiometer in this section where optical measurements are made. In addition, various manipulative experiments are carried out by using different odor stimuli with a setup in which the odor-related learning performance of ants is tested.