2017/01/10 by Axel Séguret, Bertrand Collignon, Léo Cazenille +3
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · Psychology · #Animal Behavior and Reproduction #Biology #Cohesion (chemistry) #Collective behavior #Danio #Demography #Ecology #Evolutionary biology #Fish <Actinopterygii> #Fishery #Genetics #Geography #Group (periodic table) #Group behavior #Group cohesiveness #Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models #Physics #Population #Psychology #Social group #Social psychology #Sociology #Spatial organization #Zebrafish #Zebrafish Biomedical Research Applications #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0206193
26 pages, 22 figures
arxiv created 2017/01/10 · openalex publication_date 2019/02/08 · arxiv updated 2019/02/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the collective behaviour of zebrafish shoals of different numbers of individuals (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10 and 20 AB zebrafish Danio rerio) in a constraint environment composed of two identical square rooms connected by a corridor. This simple set-up is similar to a natural patchy environment. We track the positions and the identities of the fish and compute the metrics at the group and at the individual levels. First, we show that the number of fish affects the behaviour of each individual in a group, the cohesion of the groups, the preferential interactions and the transition dynamics between the two rooms. Second, during collective departures, we show that the rankings of exit correspond to the topological organisations of the fish prior to their collective departure. This spatial organisation appears in the group a few seconds before a collective departure. These results provide new evidences on the spatial organisation of the groups and the effect of the number of fish on individual and collective behaviours in a patchy environment.