95-12 Sat Jan 2 The role of vision and flow sensing in the schooling behavior of giant danios Tidswell, BK*; Tytell, ED; Tufts University; Tufts University ben.tidswell@tufts.edu
Fish and other organisms move together in coordinated groups to defend against predators, give them allies to help gather food, and lessen the metabolic costs of transportation. Whether they are in a herd, flock, or school, animals form and maintain their groupings using multiple sensory modalities. In the lab, animal groups are often studied in well-lit, open environments, when their senses receive good information. But in the natural environment, sensing is often limited. For example, fish school in darkness, flow, or turbulence, conditions that limit the information they can gain from their senses. Our research investigates how the school structure of giant danios (Devario aequipinnatus) changes in conditions that limit sensory information. The goal of this work is to understand how fish adjust their schooling behavior in order to adapt to information-poor situations. We placed giant danios in a flow tank and varied the light level and flow speed, then tracked their midlines using DeepLabCut. Using this data we analyze the relationship between the relative position of fish in the school and the cross-correlation of their midline curvatures. This cross-correlation is a measure of synchronization in the movements of the fish. We quantify how this synchronization relates to school structure, and how it changes under the different sensory conditions. This research is our first step investigating how the information fish have about each other affects their ability to avoid predators and school effectively when they have limited information about the world around them.