Effects of social isolation on growth, stress response, and immunity of zebrafish

Abstract

Stressful housing conditions like social isolation have been shown to profoundly affect the physiology and health of various organisms which is rarely addressed in fish species. In the present study, we used a shoaling species, zebrafish, to investigate the stress reactivity of grouped and individually housed fish. We also hypothesized if isolation is a stressful condition may disrupt growth performance and innate immune response of individuals. To this end, fish were housed individually (social isolated treatment) or in groups of five fish (control treatment) for 60 days. Growth indices of fish were not affected by social isolation. Sixty-day social isolation did insignificant effect on baseline cortisol levels of specimens; however, individually housed zebrafish showed lower plasma cortisol to chasing stress than the control grouped fish. On the contrary, exposure to predator caused higher cortisol levels in social isolated fish. Serum lysozyme activity of isolated individuals was significantly lower than control fish, but activity of serum complement remained unchanged. Our results represent evidences that zebrafish experienced social isolation showed broad changes in physiological and immunological functions which may affect the quality of life.