Behavioral Plasticity in Response to Environmental Manipulation among Zebrafish (Danio rerio) Populations

PLoS One. 2015 Apr 30;10(4):e0125097. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125097. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Plastic responses can have adaptive significance for organisms occurring in unpredictable environments, migratory species and organisms occupying novel environments. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) occur in a wide range of habitats and environments that fluctuate frequently across seasons and habitats. We expect wild populations of fish to be behaviorally more flexible than fish reared in conventional laboratory and hatchery environments. We measured three behavioral traits among 2 wild (U and PN) and 1 laboratory bred (SH) zebrafish populations in four environments differing in water flow and vegetation regimes. We found that the degree of plasticity varied with the type of behavior and also among populations. In general, vegetation increased aggression and water flow decreased latency to feed after a disturbance, but the patterns were population dependent. For example, while wild U fish fed more readily after a disturbance in vegetated and/or flowing habitats, fish from the wild PN population and lab-reared SH strain showed little variation in foraging across different environmental conditions. Zebrafish from all the three populations were more aggressive when tested in an arena with vegetation. In contrast, while there was an inter-population difference in shoaling distances, variation in shoaling distance across environmental conditions within populations was not significant. These results suggest that both foraging and aggression in zebrafish are more plastic and influenced by immediate context than is shoaling distance, which may have a stronger genetic basis. Our findings point to different underlying mechanisms influencing the expression of these traits and warrants further investigations.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Aggression / physiology
  • Animals
  • Behavior, Animal / physiology
  • Environment
  • Zebrafish / physiology*

Grants and funding

This research was supported by funds from National Science Foundation award to EPM (IOB-0543491 and IOS-1257562) and the Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates program in Animal Behavior at Indiana University (funded by National Science Foundation Grant number 0453403). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.