title: Zebrafish response to a robotic replica in three dimensions.
abstract: As zebrafish emerge as a species of choice for the investigation of biological processes, a number of experimental protocols are being developed to study their social behaviour. While live stimuli may elicit varying response in focal subjects owing to idiosyncrasies, tiredness and circadian rhythms, video stimuli suffer from the absence of physical input and rely only on two-dimensional projections. Robotics has been recently proposed as an alternative approach to generate physical, customizable, effective and consistent stimuli for behavioural phenotyping. Here, we contribute to this field of investigation through a novel four-degree-of-freedom robotics-based platform to manoeuvre a biologically inspired three-dimensionally printed replica. The platform enables three-dimensional motions as well as body oscillations to mimic zebrafish locomotion. In a series of experiments, we demonstrate the differential role of the visual stimuli associated with the biologically inspired replica and its three-dimensional motion. Three-dimensional tracking and information-theoretic tools are complemented to quantify the interaction between zebrafish and the robotic stimulus. Live subjects displayed a robust attraction towards the moving replica, and such attraction was lost when controlling for its visual appearance or motion. This effort is expected to aid zebrafish behavioural phenotyping, by offering a novel approach to generate physical stimuli moving in three dimensions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering , New York University Tandon School of Engineering , Brooklyn, NY 11201 , USA.
authors.forename: Tommaso
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ruberto
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering , New York University Tandon School of Engineering , Brooklyn, NY 11201 , USA.
authors.forename: Violet
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Mwaffo
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering , New York University Tandon School of Engineering , Brooklyn, NY 11201 , USA.
authors.forename: Sukhgewanpreet
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering , New York University Tandon School of Engineering , Brooklyn, NY 11201 , USA.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Neri
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering , New York University Tandon School of Engineering , Brooklyn, NY 11201 , USA.
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1480-3539
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Porfiri
keywords: binary choice test; information theory; robotics; three-dimensional tracking; zebrafish