Yet another cool story just came out of the ever so capable hands of Roy Harpaz (@RoyHarpaz). rdcu.be/ftQKm Roy showed that larval zebrafish will adapt and get used to crowded conditions, and that they are then, later on, less sensitive about their personal space.

And he showed that the way fish measure and quantify the local population density is by integrating specifically over looming events - rather than just motion clutter. That makes sense, because loom are a very particular signature of approaching siblings - but anything can move.

Here is the link to a paper that just came out on "Social interactions in medaka". sciencedirect.com/science/ar… It's a story that was spearheaded by Roy Harpaz, where he looked into the fish's sensitivity to social cues, and how this sensitivity depends on the current swim state.

Specifically, Roy could show that adult medaka respond much more reliably to neighbors when they swim at constant speed, that they are less responsive during accelerations, and that they care very little during decelerations.

Check out the latest project that came out of the phenomenally productive collaboration that Roy Harpaz (@RoyHarpaz) has initiated a few years ago by bridging the joint expertises of @engertlab and the team of Mark Fishman (also here at Harvard).

This modeling framework accurately captures our behavior findings, and allows us to make novel behavioral predictions that we confirm in subsequent experiments.