Behavioural Platforms for Small Aquatic Species

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Aquatic toxicology studies focus on the biological impacts of environmental stressors, particularly chemicals, on aquatic species. Laboratory studies of environmental stressors have become focused on delineating sub-lethal effects from chronic and low dose exposures and multiple stressors. Behavioural toxicology is a strongly emerging sub-discipline where ecologically relevant behaviours are utilized to assess complex, whole organism responses to environmental stressors. Behaviour can be a very sensitive toxicological endpoint and ecologically relevant. In our labs, we are merging the study of environmental stressors (McClelland, Wilson) and behavioural ecology (Balshine). Much of the behavioural assays undertaken in our labs have utilized custom behavioural arenas, is performed in infrastructure primarily suitable for moderate to large species, and utilizes manual analyses of videos. Manual analyses requires significant time and limits replication and conditions assessed. We do not have suitable equipment to assess behaviour in small species and larval fish. Small species of interest include the important model fish species, zebrafish. Larval fish are considered quite sensitive to stressors and useful for determining the impacts of developmental exposures and the long term impacts of the embryonic rearing environment. We propose the purchase of two commercial behavioural platforms for larval and small fish species and software for automated analyses of behaviour to alleviate the challenges of studying behaviour in small aquatic organisms. We include a platform that records behaviour in a controlled arena (light and temperature control, and tapping and light stimulation) that is flexible and amenable to well plates and dishes; allowing simultaneous monitoring of multiple fish. We also include a platform for behavioural choice between two environmental conditions. These platforms and the automated analysis software will greatly increase the speed, accuracy, and capacity of behavioural testing (activity, stimulus response, social behaviour, stress and anxiety, shoaling, etc.), particularly for small species and larval fish. These systems will also increase the consistency of data across experiments because these systems will remove variation in results introduced by different assessors. This equipment will provide important tools to study behavioural toxicology in small species and larval fish.