Abstract
The zebrafish has been one of the preferred vertebrate model organisms of developmental biology, and is becoming an important research tool for behavioral neuroscience and behavior genetics. A prominent feature of zebrafish is their strong shoaling tendency. Most recently, the first study investigating the development of shoaling in zebrafish demonstrated that a few days after hatching zebrafish do not shoal, but that shoaling tendency gradually increases during development. The current study investigates this phenomenon using the nearest neighbor distance, a measure most frequently employed for the quantification of shoal cohesion in fish. We demonstrate that shoal cohesion increases with age, while thigmotaxis, "wall hugging," does not show a consistent age-dependent change. The mechanisms underlying the maturation of shoaling are unknown. HPLC analysis of whole brain extracts finds the concentration of dopamine, DOPAC, serotonin, and 5-HIAA normalized to total brain protein weight to increase with age. Although the behavioral and neurochemical results are only correlative at this point, they may open a new avenue into the investigation of the mechanisms and development of social behavior in zebrafish.