title: Behavioral phenotyping in zebrafish: comparison of three behavioral quantification methods.
abstract: The zebrafish has been popular in developmental biology and genetics, but its brain function has rarely been studied. High-throughput screening of mutation or drug-induced changes in brain function requires simple and automatable behavioral tests. This article compares three behavioral quantification methods in four simple behavioral paradigms that test a range of characteristics of adult zebrafish, including novelty-induced responses, social behavior, aggression, and predator-model-induced responses. Two quantification methods, manual recording and computerized videotracking of location and activity, yielded very similar results, suggesting that automated videotracking reliably measures activity parameters and will allow high-throughput screening. However, observation-based event recording of posture patterns was found generally not to correlate with videotracking measures, suggesting that further refinement of automated behavior quantification may be considered.
authors.affiliation: University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Blaser
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gerlai
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D001525:Behavioral Sciences / Q000379:methods; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology; D010641:Phenotype; D012016:Reference Values; D012919:Social Behavior; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D015027:Zebrafish