Meeting Abstract
In order to maintain position and speed during navigation in current-swept environments, fishes rely on feedback from their visual and mechanosensory modalities. Using adult wild-type zebrafish, we developed a system to project high contrast visual stimuli (moving vertical and horizontal bars) onto the lateral surface of a 5 liter flow tank. Zebrafish exhibited a robust behavior of holding station (minimal drift in the downstream direction) in flows less than 20 cm s-1. We discovered a robust movement response to vertical bars moving upstream and downstream when fish were challenged to swim against water flow. In contrast, fish were unresponsive to the same visual stimuli when not in the presence of water flow. Moving vertical bars elicited a more robust response than horizontal bars moving left-to-right to simulate roll. We performed separate stimulus experiments (vertical and horizontal bars, both with and without flow, and with individual fish as well as in groups of 3-5 individuals), and recorded multiple trials across several individuals.
