# life: apropos of interactions, “attacks” and “circling” of Zebrafish in the dynamics of dominance.

<< While two-body fighting behavior occurs throughout the animal kingdom to settle dominance disputes, important questions such as how the dynamics ultimately lead to a winner and loser are unresolved. Here (AA) examine fighting behavior at high resolution in male zebrafish. >>️

<< In the body point trajectories (AA) find a spectrum of timescales which (they) use to build informative joint coordinates consisting of relative orientation and distance. (AA) use the distribution of these coordinates to automatically identify fight epochs, and (then) demonstrate the postfight emergence of an abrupt asymmetry in relative orientations—a clear and quantitative signal of hierarchy formation. >>

AA << identify short-time, multi-animal behaviors as clustered transitions between joint configurations, and show that fight epochs are spanned by a subset of these clusters, which (they) denote as maneuvers. The resulting space of maneuvers is rich but interpretable, including motifs such as “attacks” and “circling.” In the longer-time dynamics of maneuver frequencies (AA) find differential and changing strategies, including that the eventual loser attacks more often towards the end of the contest. >>️

AA << results suggest a reevaluation of relevant assessment models in zebrafish, while our approach is generally applicable to other animal systems. >>️

️

Liam O'Shaughnessy, Tatsuo Izawa, et al. Dynamics of Dominance in Interacting Zebrafish. PRX Life 2, 043006. Oct 25, 2024.

https://journals.aps.org/prxlife/abstract/10.1103/PRXLife.2.043006

Also: behav, in https://www.inkgmr.net/kwrds.html 

Keywords: gst, behavior, behaviour