The control of routine fish maneuvers: Connecting midline kinematics to turn outcomes

Maneuverability is an important factor in determining an animal's ability to navigate its environment and succeed in predator-prey interactions. Although fish are capable of a wide range of maneuvers, most of the literature has focused on escape maneuvers while less attention has been paid to routine maneuvers, such as those used for habitat navigation. The quantitative relationships between body deformations and maneuver outcomes (displacement of the center of mass and change in trajectory) are fundamental to understanding how fish control their maneuvers, yet remain unknown in routine maneuvers. We recorded high-speed video of eight giant danios (Devario aquepinnatus) performing routine and escape maneuvers and quantified the deformation of the midline, the heading of the anterior body, and the kinematics of the centroid (a proxy for center of mass). We found that both routine and escape behaviors used qualitatively similar independent body bending events, which we curvature pulses, that propagate from head to tail but show quantitative differences in midline kinematics and turn outcomes. In routine maneuvers, the direction change and acceleration of the fish are influenced by both the magnitude of the bending pulse and by the duration of the pulse, whereas in escape maneuvers, only pulse duration influenced direction change and turn acceleration. The bending pulse appears to be the smallest functional unit of a turn, and can function independently or in combination, enabling a fish to achieve a wide range of complex maneuvers.