Dad’s social status effects offspring personality in zebrafish
By: Colleen O’Donnell, Lauren Smith, and Courtney Walsh (Stonehill College Evolution Fall 2017)
Ever wonder if fish have personality? If fish have a social hierarchy?
Well, news flash, they do! Dr. Susanne Zajitschek had the opportunity to study Zebrafish, otherwise known as Dario reno, and manipulate their social hierarchy in order to determine whether or not this would affect the offspring of the Zebrafish. She focused on the paternal aspect of rearing offspring. Dr. Zajitshek combined this manipulation with the genetic onset of personality traits of the fathers. As a result of her research, she was able to find that both social status and personality traits do in fact affect the behavior of the offspring.
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Photo Credit: Lynn Ketchum. © 2012 Oregon State University. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. https://www.flickr.com/photos/33247428@N08/26436913602
Music: Stefan Kartenberg (ft. Kara Square). Guitalele’s Happy Place. Digccmixer. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/JeffSpeed68/56194
Article: Zajitschek, Susanne, James E. Herbert-Read, Nasir M. Abbasi, Felix Zajitschek and Simone Immler. Paternal personality and social status influence offspring activity in zebrafish. BMC Evolutional Biology. 2017; 17(157): 1-10. https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-017-1005-0