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The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis

The zebrafish has been employed in several fields of biology due to its translational relevance and its simplicity and ease of maintenance. As a result, zebrafish are kept in thousands of laboratories around the world. Current industry standards favor keeping the largest possible number of fish in t...

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Autores principales: Shishis, Stephanie, Tsang, Benjamin, Gerlai, Robert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9581232/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36275854
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.934809
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author Shishis, Stephanie
Tsang, Benjamin
Gerlai, Robert
author_facet Shishis, Stephanie
Tsang, Benjamin
Gerlai, Robert
author_sort Shishis, Stephanie
collection PubMed
description The zebrafish has been employed in several fields of biology due to its translational relevance and its simplicity and ease of maintenance. As a result, zebrafish are kept in thousands of laboratories around the world. Current industry standards favor keeping the largest possible number of fish in the smallest possible volume of water to increase efficiency and reduce costs. However, physiological and psychological stress resulting from such crowding may impact a variety of phenotypes, from brain function and behavior to cardiovascular function and cancer. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about what constitutes an optimal housing environment for the zebrafish, e.g., no systematic analyses have been performed to test the role of housing density and tank volume despite recent sporadic reports implying negative effects of the standard practice of crowding. Here, we conduct the first proof of concept analysis examining the potential impact of housing density and tank volume on the behavior of zebrafish. We randomly assigned adult zebrafish to one of three tank sizes (1.5, 10, or 50 L) with one of three housing densities (1, 2, or 4 fish/L), a 3 × 3 between subject experimental design, and maintained the fish in their corresponding condition for 2 weeks. Subsequently, we tested the behavior of the fish singly in a novel open tank for 12 min and quantified several of their swim path parameters using a video-tracking system. We found significant additive and interacting effects of tank size and/or housing density on swim path parameters including immobility, swim speed, turn angle, and distance to bottom and to stimulus. Although we had only three fish densities and three tank sizes and we did not explore the effects of more extreme conditions and although the interpretation of the above behavioral effects is speculative at this point, the results already demonstrate that both tank size and housing density exerts significant effects on the zebrafish and thus should be considered in zebrafish husbandry.
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spelling pubmed-95812322022-10-20 The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis Shishis, Stephanie Tsang, Benjamin Gerlai, Robert Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience The zebrafish has been employed in several fields of biology due to its translational relevance and its simplicity and ease of maintenance. As a result, zebrafish are kept in thousands of laboratories around the world. Current industry standards favor keeping the largest possible number of fish in the smallest possible volume of water to increase efficiency and reduce costs. However, physiological and psychological stress resulting from such crowding may impact a variety of phenotypes, from brain function and behavior to cardiovascular function and cancer. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about what constitutes an optimal housing environment for the zebrafish, e.g., no systematic analyses have been performed to test the role of housing density and tank volume despite recent sporadic reports implying negative effects of the standard practice of crowding. Here, we conduct the first proof of concept analysis examining the potential impact of housing density and tank volume on the behavior of zebrafish. We randomly assigned adult zebrafish to one of three tank sizes (1.5, 10, or 50 L) with one of three housing densities (1, 2, or 4 fish/L), a 3 × 3 between subject experimental design, and maintained the fish in their corresponding condition for 2 weeks. Subsequently, we tested the behavior of the fish singly in a novel open tank for 12 min and quantified several of their swim path parameters using a video-tracking system. We found significant additive and interacting effects of tank size and/or housing density on swim path parameters including immobility, swim speed, turn angle, and distance to bottom and to stimulus. Although we had only three fish densities and three tank sizes and we did not explore the effects of more extreme conditions and although the interpretation of the above behavioral effects is speculative at this point, the results already demonstrate that both tank size and housing density exerts significant effects on the zebrafish and thus should be considered in zebrafish husbandry. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9581232/ /pubmed/36275854 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.934809 Text en Copyright © 2022 Shishis, Tsang and Gerlai. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Shishis, Stephanie
Tsang, Benjamin
Gerlai, Robert
The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis
title The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis
title_full The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis
title_fullStr The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis
title_full_unstemmed The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis
title_short The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis
title_sort effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: a systematic analysis
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9581232/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36275854
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.934809
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