Effect of acute ethanol administration on zebrafish tail-beat motion.

Zebrafish is becoming a species of choice in neurobiological and behavioral studies of alcohol-related disorders. In these efforts, the activity of adult zebrafish is typically quantified using indirect activity measures that are either scored manually or identified automatically from the fish trajectory. The analysis of such activity measures has produced important insight into the effect of acute ethanol exposure on individual and social behavior of this vertebrate species. Here, we leverage a recently developed tracking algorithm that reconstructs fish body shape to investigate the effect of acute ethanol administration on zebrafish tail-beat motion in terms of amplitude and frequency. Our results demonstrate a significant effect of ethanol on the tail-beat amplitude as well as the tail-beat frequency, both of which were found to robustly decrease for high ethanol concentrations. Such a direct measurement of zebrafish motor functions is in agreement with evidence based on indirect activity measures, offering a complementary perspective in behavioral screening.

[1]  Intrinsic Properties of Larval Zebrafish Neurons in Ethanol , 2013, PloS one.

[2]  Melina E. Hale,et al.  Swimming of larval zebrafish: fin–axis coordination and implications for function and neural control , 2004, Journal of Experimental Biology.

[3]  R C MacPhail,et al.  Locomotion in larval zebrafish: Influence of time of day, lighting and ethanol. , 2009, Neurotoxicology.

[4]  Giovanni Polverino,et al.  Closed-loop control of zebrafish response using a bioinspired robotic-fish in a preference test , 2013, Journal of The Royal Society Interface.

[5]  David Lentink,et al.  Automated visual tracking for studying the ontogeny of zebrafish swimming , 2008, Journal of Experimental Biology.

[6]  Chintan A. Trivedi,et al.  Visually driven chaining of elementary swim patterns into a goal-directed motor sequence: a virtual reality study of zebrafish prey capture , 2013, Front. Neural Circuits.

[7]  Pascal Poncin,et al.  Video multitracking of fish behaviour: a synthesis and future perspectives , 2013 .

[8]  Sachit Butail,et al.  Three-dimensional reconstruction of the fast-start swimming kinematics of densely schooling fish , 2012, Journal of The Royal Society Interface.

[9]  Gregory M. Cahill,et al.  Clock mechanisms in zebrafish , 2002, Cell and Tissue Research.

[10]  J. Vitale,et al.  Equilibration and Metabolism of Ethanol in the Goldfish , 1969, Nature.

[11]  George V Lauder,et al.  The ontogeny of fin function during routine turns in zebrafish Danio rerio , 2007, Journal of Experimental Biology.

[12]  L. Mahadevan,et al.  Scaling macroscopic aquatic locomotion , 2014, Nature Physics.

[13]  R. Bainbridge,et al.  The Speed of Swimming of Fish as Related to Size and to the Frequency and Amplitude of the Tail Beat , 1958 .

[14]  Su Guo,et al.  Differences of acute versus chronic ethanol exposure on anxiety-like behavioral responses in zebrafish , 2011, Behavioural Brain Research.

[15]  Yangzhong Zhou,et al.  Quantification of larval zebrafish motor function in multiwell plates using open-source MATLAB applications , 2014, Nature Protocols.

[16]  Wei Cheng,et al.  Motion analytics of zebrafish using fine motor kinematics and multi-view trajectory , 2016, Multimedia Systems.

[17]  R C MacPhail,et al.  Acute neuroactive drug exposures alter locomotor activity in larval zebrafish. , 2010, Neurotoxicology and teratology.

[18]  Ethan K. Scott,et al.  Fin-Tail Coordination during Escape and Predatory Behavior in Larval Zebrafish , 2012, PloS one.

[19]  R. Gerlai,et al.  Drinks like a fish: zebra fish (Danio rerio) as a behavior genetic model to study alcohol effects , 2000, Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

[20]  Rachel Blaser,et al.  Effects of acute and chronic ethanol exposure on the behavior of adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) , 2006, Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

[21]  C. Maximino,et al.  Pharmacological analysis of zebrafish (Danio rerio) scototaxis , 2011, Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry.

[22]  D. Janz,et al.  Dietary selenomethionine exposure in adult zebrafish alters swimming performance, energetics and the physiological stress response. , 2011, Aquatic toxicology.

[23]  Pietro Perona,et al.  Automated image-based tracking and its application in ecology. , 2014, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[24]  Christina N. Toms,et al.  Alcohol-induced behavior change in zebrafish models , 2011, Reviews in the neurosciences.

[25]  A. Pérez-Escudero,et al.  idTracker: tracking individuals in a group by automatic identification of unmarked animals , 2014, Nature Methods.

[26]  M. Vianna,et al.  The spinning task: a new protocol to easily assess motor coordination and resistance in zebrafish. , 2013, Zebrafish.

[27]  Siddharth Gaikwad,et al.  Assessing Social Behavior Phenotypes in Adult Zebrafish: Shoaling, Social Preference, and Mirror Biting Tests , 2012 .

[28]  Sonal R. Prajapati,et al.  Differences in acute alcohol-induced behavioral responses among zebrafish populations. , 2008, Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research.

[29]  J. Videler,et al.  Hydrodynamics of unsteady fish swimming and the effects of body size: comparing the flow fields of fish larvae and adults. , 2000, The Journal of experimental biology.

[30]  Monte Matthews,et al.  A virtual tour of the Guide for zebrafish users. , 2002, Lab animal.

[31]  Maurizio Porfiri,et al.  Acute ethanol administration affects zebrafish preference for a biologically inspired robot. , 2013, Alcohol.

[32]  Sachit Butail,et al.  Sociality modulates the effects of ethanol in zebra fish. , 2014, Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research.

[33]  Sachit Butail,et al.  Measuring zebrafish turning rate. , 2015, Zebrafish.

[34]  M. Porfiri,et al.  Temperature influences sociality and activity of freshwater fish , 2014, Environmental Biology of Fishes.

[35]  Richard A Rabin,et al.  Ethanol effects on three strains of zebrafish: model system for genetic investigations , 2003, Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

[36]  R. Ryback,et al.  A method to study Short-Term Memory (STM) in the goldfish , 1976, Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

[37]  M. Porfiri,et al.  A Robotics-Based Behavioral Paradigm to Measure Anxiety-Related Responses in Zebrafish , 2013, PloS one.

[38]  L. Weber,et al.  Acute exposure to 2,4-dinitrophenol alters zebrafish swimming performance and whole body triglyceride levels. , 2011, Comparative biochemistry and physiology. Toxicology & pharmacology : CBP.