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Boldness, Aggression, and Shoaling Assays for Zebrafish Behavioral Syndromes
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Collective states, multistability and transitional behavior in schooling fish.

Kolbjørn Tunstrøm1, Yael Katz, Christos C Ioannou

  • 1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America. tunstrom@princeton.edu

Plos Computational Biology
|March 8, 2013
PubMed
Summary

Fish schooling behavior exhibits distinct collective states: swarms, milling, and polarized groups. These states depend on group size and transitions are influenced by external and internal factors, revealing bistable regimes in collective motion.

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Area of Science:

  • Collective behavior dynamics
  • Animal group movement patterns
  • Emergent pattern formation in nature

Background:

  • Pattern formation is common in nature, arising from interactions among individuals.
  • Understanding collective behavior requires identifying low-level dynamics and distinguishing between external factors, self-organization, or co-existing states.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To map collective motion in schooling fish onto order parameters.
  • To identify and characterize distinct collective states in fish groups.
  • To investigate the stability and transitions between these collective states.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized golden shiners (30-300 individuals) as a model system.
  • Mapped collective motion using order parameters to describe group structure.
  • Analyzed local and global group properties to understand state transitions.

Main Results:

  • Identified at least three dynamically stable collective states: swarm, milling, and polarized groups.
  • Swarm state characterized by slow motion and disordered structure.
  • Transitions to ordered states (milling, polarized) occur with increased swim speed.
  • Group size influences the stability of collective behaviors.
  • Milling and polarized states exhibit bistability, with transitions driven by perturbations.

Conclusions:

  • Collective motion in fish can be described by distinct, stable states.
  • Group behavior stability and transitions are influenced by group size and environmental/internal factors.
  • The study supports theoretical predictions of bistable collective states in animal groups.