Department of Cell & Systems Biology, Neuroscience, University of Toronto, Mississauga, ON, Canada.
Dev Psychobiol. 2012 Jan;54(1):28-35. doi: 10.1002/dev.20571. Epub 2011 Jun 8.
The zebrafish has been one of the preferred vertebrate model organisms of developmental biology, and is becoming an important research tool for behavioral neuroscience and behavior genetics. A prominent feature of zebrafish is their strong shoaling tendency. Most recently, the first study investigating the development of shoaling in zebrafish demonstrated that a few days after hatching zebrafish do not shoal, but that shoaling tendency gradually increases during development. The current study investigates this phenomenon using the nearest neighbor distance, a measure most frequently employed for the quantification of shoal cohesion in fish. We demonstrate that shoal cohesion increases with age, while thigmotaxis, "wall hugging," does not show a consistent age-dependent change. The mechanisms underlying the maturation of shoaling are unknown. HPLC analysis of whole brain extracts finds the concentration of dopamine, DOPAC, serotonin, and 5-HIAA normalized to total brain protein weight to increase with age. Although the behavioral and neurochemical results are only correlative at this point, they may open a new avenue into the investigation of the mechanisms and development of social behavior in zebrafish.
斑马鱼一直是发育生物学中首选的脊椎动物模式生物之一，并且正在成为行为神经科学和行为遗传学的重要研究工具。斑马鱼的一个突出特点是它们强烈的群体倾向。最近，第一项研究调查了斑马鱼的群体形成发育，结果表明，孵化后几天的斑马鱼不会群体游动，但在发育过程中，群体游动的趋势逐渐增加。本研究使用最近邻距离来研究这种现象，这是鱼类群体凝聚力量化最常用的一种方法。我们证明，群体凝聚力随年龄的增长而增加，而趋触性（“壁贴”）并没有表现出一致的年龄依赖性变化。群体形成的成熟机制尚不清楚。对全脑提取物的 HPLC 分析发现，多巴胺、DOPAC、血清素和 5-HIAA 的浓度与总脑蛋白重量的比值随年龄的增长而增加。尽管目前这些行为和神经化学方面的结果只是相关的，但它们可能为研究斑马鱼社会行为的机制和发育开辟新途径。
