When feeling is better than seeing : Adult Zebrafish Ignore Wide-Field Optic-Flow in Laminar, but not Turbulent Hydrodynamic Environments
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Many animals navigate their world largely by seeing and feeling it. To disentangle these visual and mechanosensory contributions, we developed a virtual reality assay targeting the optomotor response in adult wild-type zebrafish swimming against flow. By projecting dynamic visual patterns onto the walls of a variable-speed flow tank, we decoupled wide-field optic flow from hydrodynamic velocity. We then tested fish responses to abrupt visual perturbations while they held station in the unsteady wake behind a bluff body. These perturbations reliably elicited compensatory optomotor responses, with fish aligning to the direction of the moving stimulus. Notably, this behavior was absent in uniform flows, suggesting that fish prioritize visual input when predictive lateral line signaling is compromised. We propose that this sensory shift serves to optimize swimming energetics in turbulent wakes. Extending this framework, we further show that zebrafish swimming against flow, whether alone or in groups, exhibit heightened escape responses to looming visual stimuli. Together, our findings reveal that fish sensory strategies are not fixed but dynamically tuned to hydrodynamic context: favoring visual cues in turbulent environments and lateral line input in uniform flows.
Institutions: Case Western Reserve University, University of Florida
Language: English
Subfield: Nature and Landscape Conservation
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G2500807902, G3009324719, G3773749580, MCA: The neural and genetic architecture underlying lateral line evolution and development in cavefish, From Theory to Thrust: Revealing the Role of Actuation and Sensing in How Undulatory Swimmers Change Speed, G439613525, Understanding the role of Tmc proteins in hair cell mechanotransduction of zebrafish, Single Neuron Resolution of Flow Sensing in the Zebrafish Lateral line during development, Collaborative Research: Flexibility and Robustness of attack and evasion: reverse-engineering the mechanisms of behavioral control, Schooling through Vortex Streets; A Biological and Computational Approach to Understanding Collective Behavior in Wild Fish, G761809178, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, KITP Interdisciplinary Biology Initiative
OpenAlex ID: W7147515522