Protocol for recording and analyzing spontaneous locomotion in Drosophila

The quantitative analysis of locomotion is used to study many biological processes. Here, we describe how to record the locomotion of up to 50 Drosophila individuals and process the resulting video files using FlyTracker. We detail the use of modifiable MatLab scripts to process structure array files generated by FlyTracker. We have applied this to study Drosophila movement during aging, but it could be used to address a variety of research questions. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Barwell et al. (2021).¹.