Beyond bold versus shy: Zebrafish exploratory behavior falls into several behavioral clusters and is influenced by strain and sex.

ABSTRACT: Individual differences in exploratory behavior have been found across a range of taxa and are thought to contribute to evolutionary fitness. Animals that explore more of a novel environment and visit areas of high predation risk are considered bold, whereas animals with the opposite behavioral pattern are shy. Here, we determined whether this bimodal characterization of bold versus shy adequately captures the breadth of behavioral variation in zebrafish or if there are more than these two subtypes. To identify behavioral categories, we applied unsupervised machine to three-dimensional swim traces from over 400 adult zebrafish across four strains (AB, TL, TU, and WIK) and both sexes. We found that behavior stratified into four distinct clusters: previously described bold and shy behavior an

SUBMITTER: Rajput N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9450886 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature