What's flow got to do with it? Effects of flow on schooling and startle response in fish

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event What's flow got to do with it? Effects of flow on schooling and startle response in fish Amanda Chicoli1, Sheryl Coombs2 and Derek Paley1* 1 University of Maryland, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, United States 2 Bowling Green State University, Department of Biological Sciences, United States Benefits of schooling behavior are often cast in terms of predator evasion. The collective response of fish to a predator is an extremely rapid, propagating wave of visual and hydro-acoustic information, also known as the ‘Trafalgar effect’. The alignment and density of the school is likely to play a role in this information transmission, although little is known of what interactions among group members lead to predator detection and group cohesion. In this study, we test the hypothesis that school cohesiveness improves the signal-to-noise ratio for intraschool transmission of threat information. Experiments were performed on giant danio (Devario aequipinnatus) in a no-flow condition and a flow condition, to simulate a more naturalistic environment. Using a high frame rate camera recording at 400 fps and an in-house tracking system, we are able to extract the position, orientation and shape parameters of each fish in the school. Using this data, we seek to quantify the benefits of cohesive schooling using signal detection theory. In the comparison between flow and no-flow, we found differences in nearest neighbor distance and local alignment between nearest neighbors. We did not find any difference in response probability between these two conditions. The results of this study have implications in understanding the benefits of schooling behavior, including possible anti-predator and hydrodynamic benefits. In a broader sense, this study is part of our long-term goal to investigate collective behavior and the mechanisms of information transmission in fish schools. Acknowledgements We thank Joseph Coleman and Jennifer Lun for help in running behavioral experiments. We also thank Sachit Butail for assistance with the tracking software, and Eric Tytell and Avis Cohen for use of the high frame rate camera. Keywords: collective behavior, fish schooling, Giant danio, startle response Conference: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation (see alternatives below as well) Topic: Social Behavior Citation: Chicoli A, Coombs S and Paley D (2012). What's flow got to do with it? Effects of flow on schooling and startle response in fish . Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00204 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 29 Apr 2012; Published Online: 07 Jul 2012. * Correspondence: Dr. Derek Paley, University of Maryland, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, College Park, Maryland, 20742, United States, dpaley@umd.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Amanda Chicoli Sheryl Coombs Derek Paley Google Amanda Chicoli Sheryl Coombs Derek Paley Google Scholar Amanda Chicoli Sheryl Coombs Derek Paley PubMed Amanda Chicoli Sheryl Coombs Derek Paley Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.