Measuring Behavioral Individuality in the Acoustic Startle Behavior in Zebrafish
Carlos Pantoja,
Adam Hoagland,
Elizabeth Carroll,
David Schoppik,
Ehud Isacoff
Affiliations
Carlos Pantoja
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
Adam Hoagland
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
Elizabeth Carroll
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
David Schoppik
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA
Ehud Isacoff
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, USAHelen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, USA, Physical Bioscience Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, USA
The objective of this protocol is to provide a detailed description for the construction and use of a behavioral apparatus, the zBox, for high-throughput behavioral measurements in larval zebrafish (Danio rerio). The zBox is used to measure behavior in multiple individuals simultaneously. Individual fish are housed in wells of multi-well plates and receive acoustic/vibration stimuli with simultaneous recording of behavior. Automated analysis of behavioral movies is performed with MATLAB scripts. This protocol was adapted from two of our previously published papers (Levitz et al., 2013; Pantoja et al., 2016). The zBox provides an easy to setup flexible platform for behavioral experiments in zebrafish larvae.
