A2EPG: A new software for the analysis of electrical penetration graphs to study plant probing behaviour of hemipteran insects

This article introduces A2EPG, a new software application capable of automatically analyse signals derived from the electrical penetration graphs (EPG), a technique widely used to monitoring the plant probing behaviour of hemipterean insects. EPG records contain different well-known waveform patterns that are associated to specific behavioural activities inside the plant tissues, which are usually manually labelled in the present. A2EPG incorporates search engines for five EPG waveforms (Np, C, pd, G and El) and provides output information indicating the time spans of each recognised waveform, which can be easily confirmed or manipulated by an expert user, reducing the overall time devoted to the analysis of EPG data. The application will be useful for researchers aimed to study the probing behaviour of piercing/sucking mouth parts, particularly aphids. The effectiveness of A2EPG was studied in EPG records obtained from individuals of two aphid species, exhibiting a substantial recognition efficacy for most of the considered waveforms. In general, A2EPG constitutes a useful tool for a rapid evaluation of EPG data over currently available software in the field. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.