Dominating lengthscales of zebrafish collective behaviour.

Collective behaviour in living systems is observed across many scales, from bacteria to insects, to fish shoals. Zebrafish have emerged as a model system amenable to laboratory study. Here we report a three-dimensional study of the collective dynamics of fifty zebrafish. We observed the emergence of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yushi Yang, Francesco Turci, Erika Kague, Chrissy L Hammond, John Russo, C Patrick Royall
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2022-01-01
Series:PLoS Computational Biology
Online Access:https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009394&type=printable
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Summary:Collective behaviour in living systems is observed across many scales, from bacteria to insects, to fish shoals. Zebrafish have emerged as a model system amenable to laboratory study. Here we report a three-dimensional study of the collective dynamics of fifty zebrafish. We observed the emergence of collective behaviour changing between ordered to randomised, upon adaptation to new environmental conditions. We quantify the spatial and temporal correlation functions of the fish and identify two length scales, the persistence length and the nearest neighbour distance, that capture the essence of the behavioural changes. The ratio of the two length scales correlates robustly with the polarisation of collective motion that we explain with a reductionist model of self-propelled particles with alignment interactions.
ISSN:1553-734X
1553-7358