Effect of speed on collective behavior in schooling and shoaling fishes


SOCIETY FOR INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE BIOLOGY
2021 VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETING (VAM)
January 3 – Febuary 28, 2021

Meeting Abstract


18-3  Sat Jan 2  Effect of speed on collective behavior in schooling and shoaling fishes Sepúlveda-Rodríguez, G*; Lauder, GV; Di Santo, V; Stockholm University, Sweden; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Stockholm University, Sweden guasepulvedar@gmail.com

Collective behavior arises from the interactions among a group of individuals particularly during locomotion. In social fishes, this collective behavior is manifested either in stable formations, where individuals maintain precise relative positions, i.e. a school, or in a group of individuals swimming together in a loose aggregation, i.e. a shoal. Both behaviors are thought to decrease energy expenditure during swimming as social fishes benefit from the presence of conspecifics. However, it is unclear if schooling fishes may acquire additional advantages when compared to shoaling fishes by swimming in geometrically specific formations. Here we present kinematics and dynamics during collective behavior at different speeds in an obligate schooling species, the Inland silverside Menidia beryllina and a shoaling species, the giant danio Devario aequipinnatus. For both species we chose individuals of about 5cm in length. We used high speed cameras to reconstruct kinematics of collective behavior of groups of fishes at speeds between 1-15 BL/s. In particular, we quantified fish position and stability through time of this position in the school, body angle, tail beat frequency, amplitude and body curvature across all speeds. One of the most important results from this study is that as speed increases, obligate schoolers tend to maintain a stable formation, while the shoaling species breaks up the group as individuals switch position much more frequently.

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