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MultiTrace
The Beak Analysis
This analysis module is designed to search and analyze the opening and closing of the beak. For this purpose a special sensor must had recorded the openings of the beak of the animal. The software provides specific functions for the analysis of two displayed graphs for a diving animal. The graphs considered are: beak data and depth data. The graph for beak values is analysed for specific beak elements e.g. beak integral, durations etc. The beak finder of MT searches a series of joint beak events (a 'bout') and detects inside each bout all single beak events ('SubEvents' SE), displays the bout and the marked SE's at the screen. The user can modify or correct the proposals of MT. MT analyzes the bout in question and exports the results into three files: One file contains all results, the second file contains only breath events (i.e. beak activity at the water surface) the third file contains only prey events i.e. beak activities under water.
Fig 1 The upper graph represents the beak events, the lower graph shows the recorded dive events. MT_beak found a bout of beaks (all beak events when swimming) - caused propably by breathing
Fig2. MT detected the next dive phase and found all beak events at this phase These are propably feeding events. The program will continue to search the next swim phase and to find there all beak events and so on until the end of the file is reached.
Fig 3) The user can set paramaters according to his specific data. A help is available for all settings.
MT exports the results of the analysis into a text file, importable by any spread-sheet program (e.g. Excel). The columns of each line of the result file:
# | Nr of bout |
Onset | Onset of the bout as dd.mm.yy hh:mm:ss |
Duration | Duration of the bout [sec] |
Kind | Bout event type. 'F' Prey-, 'B' Breath-event |
#Sub events | Number of subevents (single beak events). |
Integral | Sum of the integrals of all subevents. |
PrecDuration | Duration [secs] of the preceeding dive event. *) |
Max depth | Max. depth [m] of the preceeding dive event. *) |
Up to 30 blocks (6 lines) as below. Each block descibes one subevent (SE) | |
SE-StTime | Subevent Onset [hh:mm:ss:msec]. |
SE-ETime | Subevent ending ime [hh:mm:ss:msec]. |
SE-Duration | Duration of SE |
SE-MaxAmpl | Max. y-value of the subevent. |
SE-Integral | Subevent integral. |
SE-CorrDepth | Water temperature corresponding with SE. |
*) Filled only, if the current event is a breath event i.e. a beak event at the water surface (not during a dive).