Abstract
The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a small teleost fish that is ubiquitous across the Northern Hemisphere. Among the behaviours that have been characterised in this species is ritualized courtship, aggressiveness and parental behaviour. Whereas three-spined sticklebacks have been used for ecological, evolutionary, parasitological and toxicological research, its complex behavioural repertoire and experimental advantages have not been exploited for basic neuroscience research. The aim of the present study is to describe some innate behaviours of laboratory bred three-spined sticklebacks by using a battery of tests that have been developed and validated to model some aspects of human psychiatric disorders in zebrafish. We recorded mirror induced aggression, novel object boldness, shoaling, and anxiety-like behaviour using both the novel tank diving and the black-white preference tests. We show that behaviour of three-spined sticklebacks in these standard tests is remarkably similar to that of zebrafish and other species and can be altered by fluoxetine and buspirone. These findings highlight the potential of using three-spined sticklebacks for cross-species and translational studies.
Highlights
The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a small teleost fish that is ubiquitous across the Northern Hemisphere
The aim of the present study is to describe some innate behaviours of laboratory bred three-spined sticklebacks by using a battery of tests that have been developed to model some aspects of human psychiatric disorders in zebrafish [16,17,18]
In this paper we have described the behaviour of laboratory bred three-spined sticklebacks using paradigms that are relevant to model some aspects of human psychiatric disorders in other species
Summary
The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a small teleost fish that is ubiquitous across the Northern Hemisphere. Three-spined stickleback are easy to find in rivers, lakes and ponds as well as coastal regions. They are easy to breed and maintain in the lab at low cost and the genome sequence is available (www.ensembl.org). The ethology of this species was extensively studied during the 20th century thanks to the pioneering work of Nico Tinbergen [2,3]. Three-spined stickleback have been used to study behavioural syndromes such as aggression-boldness and their implication for evolution [4,5,6].
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