In an attempt to simultaneously gain more research experience and develop my technical skills, I reached out to several professors all over New York City asking for an opportunity to work with them. Fortunately and graciously, Dr Alvarado replied, giving me the wonderful opportunity to be involved with the Alvarado-Tajerian Lab at Queens College.
I spearheaded advanced data analysis for the lab by creating Markov Chain models to discern and predict prevailing behavioral patterns within the cichlid fish population starting with a study that intends to examine how stressful events affect male sexual performance and reproductive capabilities using cichlid fish.
This was a learning curve for me as before this I had no clue what Markov chains were, or how they could be developed in Python. However, through several trials and errors, I got a running code which developed the Markov chains, but the code was quite chunky. I have now successfully been able to reduce the volume of code, and its written in such a way that it can be applied to any animal species behavior for its analysis.
Sample Markov Chain Model
GUI
Legend
Red represents aggressive behavior
Green represents reproductive behavior
Blue represents aversive behavior
The decimal number represents the likelihood with which a subsequent behavior will happen after current behavior
