BMW homed in on the schooling behavior of fish, while Subaru focused on the bounding nature of the kangaroo.
Funded by NSF, DARPA, and the Office of Naval Research, members of the lab are studying fish schooling behavior and the vertebral columns in sharks and bony fish.
Signs of fenvalerate poisoning in fish include loss of schooling behavior, swimming near the water surface, hyperactivity, erratic swimming, seizures, loss of buoyancy, increased gill mucus secretions, flaring of the gill arches, head shaking and listlessness before death (Bradbury and Coats 1989a, b).
Can we dissect the stimuli that elicit schooling behavior?
These marine and benthic sticklebacks showed different levels of spontaneous schooling behavior.
Finally, we begin to explore the stimuli that elicit schooling behavior in these populations.
In addition to providing an opportunity to investigate the genetic and environmental influences on schooling behavior, the model school assay has already enabled novel insights into the mechanisms of schooling behavior.
In this study we investigated variation in schooling behavior between two populations of stickleback from different habitats.
Using the model school assay, we were able to reliably elicit schooling behavior in the laboratory under repeatable stimulus conditions.
Our tracking data show that free-swimming groups of laboratory-raised marine and benthic sticklebacks exhibit differences in schooling behavior.
We have developed a technique to quantify the schooling behavior of an individual in standardized but easily manipulated social circumstances.
