Studying social behavior in zebrafish (<i>Danio rerio</i>o) in the tests of social interaction, social preference, behavior in the shoaling and aggression tasks

Abstract

Social interactions between conspecifics are an important factor in normal development of an individual in a community, and their deficits correlate with multiple psychiatric disorders. Several methods for assessing social behavior and its deficits have been described for zebrafish (Danio rerio), and include tests for social preference and social interaction. These tests are commonly used to model a wide range of social phenotypes that are potentially relevant to studying depression, pathological aggression, schizophrenia, autism, and other brain diseases. An important and widely used method for determining social behavior is the shoaling test, based on the innate, genetically fixed feature of zebrafish to form shoals/schools, the density of which depends on many factors, such as the presence of a predator, the effect of pharmacological drugs, etc. Aggression, along with shoaling, is an important manifestation of social behavior, which is also a core symptoms of multiple brain diseases, such as control disorder and conduct disorder. Here, we discuss various methods for assessing aggressive behavior in zebrafish (e.g., the mirror reflection tests), and their shoaling agonistic behaviors.