RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Mapping the structure of drosophilid behavior JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 002873 DO 10.1101/002873 A1 Gordon J. Berman A1 Daniel M. Choi A1 William Bialek A1 Joshua W. Shaevitz YR 2014 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/02/20/002873.abstract AB Most animals possess the ability to actuate a vast diversity of movements, ostensibly constrained only by morphology and physics. In practice, however, a frequent assumption in behavioral science is that most of an animal’s activities can be described in terms of a small set of stereotyped motifs. Here we introduce a method for mapping the behavioral space of organisms, relying only upon the underlying structure of postural movement data to organize and classify behaviors. We find that six different drosophilid species each perform a mix of non-stereotyped actions and over one hundred hierarchically-organized, stereotyped behaviors. Moreover, we use this approach to compare these species’ behavioral spaces, systematically identifying subtle behavioral differences between closely-related species.