Social dominance modulates eavesdropping in zebrafish

Group living animals may eavesdrop on signalling interactions between conspecifics and integrate it with their own past social experience in order to optimize the use of relevant information from others. However, little is known about this interplay between public (eavesdropped) and private social information. To investigate it, we first manipulated the dominance status of bystander zebrafish. Next, we either allowed or prevented bystanders from observing a fight. Finally, we assessed their behaviour towards the winners and losers of the interaction, using a custom-made video-tracking system and directional analysis. We found that only dominant bystanders who had seen the fight revealed a significant increase in directional focus (a measure of attention) towards the losers of the fights. Furthermore, our results indicate that information about the fighters' acquired status was collected from the signalling interaction itself and not from post-interaction status cues, which implies the existence of individual recognition in zebrafish. Thus, we show for the first time that zebrafish, a highly social model organism, eavesdrop on conspecific agonistic interactions and that this process is modulated by the eavesdroppers' dominance status. We suggest that this type of integration of public and private information may be ubiquitous in social learning processes.

Quantifying aggressive behavior in zebrafish

Aggression is a complex behavior that influences social relationships and can be seen as adaptive or maladaptive depending on the context and intensity of expression. A model organism suitable for genetic dissection of the underlying neural mechanisms of aggressive behavior is still needed. Zebrafish has already proven to be a powerful vertebrate model organism for the study of normal and pathological brain function. Despite the fact that zebrafish is a gregarious species that forms shoals, when allowed to interact in pairs, both males and females express aggressive behavior and establish dominance hierarchies. Here, we describe two protocols that can be used to quantify aggressive behavior in zebrafish, using two different paradigms: (1) staged fights between real opponents and (2) mirror-elicited fights. We also discuss the methodology for the behavior analysis, the expected results for both paradigms, and the advantages and disadvantages of each paradigm in face of the specific goals of the study.