bds062/cichlid-behavior-pairs

Cichlid Behavior Pairs

Video/annotation pairs of Astatotilapia burtoni (cichlid fish) reproductive and courtship behavior, recorded during a PGF2a-induced spawning assay comparing nose-occluded ("VetBond") vs. sham-treated ("Sham") females — a manipulation of olfactory input to the mating interaction. Each pair consists of one top-down video of a male/female tank trial and one point-annotated behavior event table (exported from BORIS) marking the timing of specific courtship/aggression behaviors performed by the male and female.

This dataset supports temporal action localization / detection research on animal behavior, using sparse point-in-time annotations rather than start/end-annotated segments.

Dataset structure

pairs/
  <recording_id>/
    <original_video_filename>.mp4      # ~60 min top-down tank recording, 25 fps
    <EventsTable_or_id>.tsv            # BORIS point-event export

There are 17 recording pairs, totaling ~103 GB. Each recording is one 60-minute trial in a single tank ("TankA11") filmed from a fixed overhead camera ("Pi14").

Recording ID naming

Directory names follow YY-MM-DD-Run<N>-<Treatment>-<Circling>, e.g. 25-07-21-Run2-Sham-NoCir:

Field	Meaning
YY-MM-DD	Recording date
Run<N>	Trial number within that date (a date may have Run1 and Run2, run back-to-back the same day)
Treatment: Sham / VetBond	Whether the female's nares were sham-treated (control) or occluded with VetBond tissue adhesive (olfaction blocked)
Circling: Cir / NoCir	Whether circling behavior (a spawning-associated behavior) was observed during the trial

The .mp4 filename inside each directory is the original capture filename and encodes the same information plus the exact start time and nominal duration, e.g. 2025-07-21-1125-Pi14-TankA11-Run1-Vetbond-60min-Circling-001 (1).mp4.

Annotation schema

Annotations are per-event point labels (an instantaneous timestamp, not a start/end interval), exported from BORIS and normalized to a single flat schema across all recordings — one header row, one row per event:

Column	Description
Time (s)	Event timestamp, in seconds from video start
Total length (s)	Video duration in seconds
FPS	Video frame rate (25.0 for all recordings)
Subject	Male or Female — which fish performed the behavior
Behavior	Behavior label (see taxonomy below)
Behavioral category	Unused in this dataset (blank)
Comment	Free-text annotator comment (blank in this dataset)
Status	Always POINT (instantaneous event, not a state interval)

Behavior taxonomy

Behavior	Subject	Count
Bite (Male)	Male	3,516
Lead (Male)	Male	1,455
Quiver (Male)	Male	1,262
Chase/Charge (Male)	Male	846
Tilt (Specify Sex)	Male or Female	594
Peck (Specify Sex)	Male or Female	529
Follow (Female)	Female	61
Total		8,263

(Tilt and Peck are annotated for either sex; Subject gives the actual performer for each event.)

Statistics

• 17 recordings, ~60 minutes each, 25 fps, single fixed overhead camera/tank
• ~103 GB total (videos dominate; TSVs are a few hundred KB combined)
• 8,263 point-annotated behavior events across 7 behavior classes

License

TBD — license to be finalized alongside the associated publication. Contact the authors before reuse.

Citation

Published at the CV4Ecology workshop, ECCV 2026. Full citation will be added once proceedings are available.