The spatiotemporal dynamics of rheotactic behavior depends on flow speed and available sensory information

Rheotaxis is a robust, multisensory behavior with many potential benefits for fish and other aquatic organisms. Visual (optic flow) cues appear to be sufficient for rheotaxis, but other sensory cues can clearly compensate for the loss of vision. Nevertheless, the nature of multisensory interactions and the relative contributions of different senses under varying conditions are poorly understood - largely because there is so little description of the actual behavior. Here, we examined the effects of different flow speeds and different sensory conditions on the spatiotemporal dynamics of rheotaxis. Although the overall ability of giant danio (Devario aequipinnatus) to head upstream is largely unaffected by either unimodal or bimodal deprivation of visual and/or lateral line senses, the spatiotemporal form of the behavior is altered in subtle ways. When deprived of vision, fish move further upstream, but the angular accuracy of the upstream heading is reduced. In addition, visually deprived fish exhibit left/right sweeping movements near the upstream barrier at low flow speeds. Sweeping movements are abolished when these fish are additionally deprived of lateral line information. These results indicate that fish adopt different sensorimotor strategies to compensate for the loss of one or more senses and that the nature of multisensory interactions is a complex function of flow speed.