A New Era of Markerless Insect Tracking Technology Has been Unlocked by Retro-ID

We obtained reed bees from the Dandenong Ranges National Park, Victoria, Australia (lat. -37.90, long 145.37) These bees exhibit semi-social behaviour and construct their nests within the pithy stems of fern fronds and other plants. We placed each insect in a separate container to facilitate individual id for testing. In order to run the experiment over several days, insects were refrigerated overnight below 4°C. After warming up, each bee was individually recorded daily in an arena. Here it was illuminated by an overhead ring light and videoed using a Dino-Lite digital microscope for 30–50 seconds per session at 30 fps.