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Mechanisms of Rheotaxis in Fish

It has been a long-held belief that the lateral line serves a prominent role to help fish’s ability to demonstrate positive rheotaxis (Kulpa et al, 2105). Although the lateral line is an important mechanism in establishing rheotaxis, recent studies have shown that fish which have had their lateral lines pharmacologically disabled can still exhibit positive rheotaxis (Trump, McHenry, 2013). There is little argument that the visual and lateral line input are major contributors to rheostatic behavior, however it has been determined that fish are able to compensate the loss of either of these two inputs by using other senses (such as touch and vestibular) (Bok-Coleman et al, 2013).

Along with the two major contributors of visual clues and lateral line input there are many different variables that contribute to rheotaxis behavior of most fish species (Burbano et al, 2021). Fish use a combination of biological and environmental mechanisms to maintain positive rheotaxis. The biological mechanisms include visual cues, olfactory(odor), tactile and lateral line senses to maintain their body position in a current. These variables are also paired with their vestibular information to help orient the fish in the water column, as long as there is enough streamflow velocity. Loss of visual cues caused some of the fish to incorrectly judge the flow speed, which caused them to overcorrect due to lack of visual feedback (Bok-Coleman et al, 2013).

While most fish exhibit their rheostatic behavior based on different sensory input such as vision, olfactory and touch. There are also other environmental mechanisms that play a role of rheostatic in aquatic animals, light (phototaxis), temperature (Dodson, Young, 1977) and fluid flow (Burbano et al, 2021). Many fish actually take advantage of the streamflow (hydromechanical feedback) to assist orientation and navigation. Fish were observed to follow the rotation created by the flow, regardless of the visual clues. The fish in this study were observed taking advantage of the vortex wakes to help maintain upstream swimming thru passive propulsion. In a similar study, even in the absence of visual cues, juvenile Zebrafish use flow velocity gradients as navigational aids and maintain positive rheostatic (Burbano et al, 2021). It was observed that Common Shiners that photoperiods also had an impact in the upstream movement, but was closely tied to the increase in temperature (Dodson, Young, 1977). There is still much to learn about how rheotaxis is maintained in fish, including how rheotaxis changes within the lifecycle if individuals. A recent study identified a change from positive to negative rheotaxis based the juvenile and adult stages of zebrafish on their optomotor response (OMRs), which it the fishes’ ability to swim in the direction of optic flow. (Bak-Coleman et al.2015). The human impact to the aquatic environment may takes years of extensive study to fully understand, if that is even possible. More research has to also be conducted to identify how anthropomorphic input impact has on the rheotaxis behavior of fish and other aquatic animals. Data suggest that sub-lethal stormwater exposure can negatively impact sensory function, potentially impairing prey capture, predator avoidance, and rheotaxis.(Young et al, 2018).

Schooling fish

The environmental mechanism of magnetic field (Cresci et al, 2017), odor (Emmanuel, Dodson 2011) (Sacoca et al 2017) and noise (Chicoli et al, 2016) have been shown to have an impact on shoaling fishes, although the affects of noise have little/no impact per individuals. There are two hypotheses regarding how rheostatic response is affected by the magnetic field when fish swim in shoals. One hypothesis is that magnetoreceptors that are located in olfactory cells which allows fish to exhibit rheostatic behavior. The second hypothesis is that magnetite crystals are located also in the lateral line (Cresci et al, 2017). The introduction of odors into the aquatic environment can have both positive and negative effect on fish rheotaxis behavior. It generally thought of as a positive influence, such as how an adult male trout is affected by the dilute ovarian fluid from spawning female trout. The attractant odor triggered a positive rheotropic responses (Emmanuel, Dodson 2011). On the contrary, anchovy schooling activity greatly increased after a biofouled plastic solution (odor) was introduced. However, there was a significant loss of rheotaxis once the biofouled plastic solution was introduced into their environment (Savoca et al, 2017). Fish within a school will orientate themselves with their neighbors and flow direction that they perceive. These measures have been found to be contaminated by sensory noises. The fish will then relay more on the social cues of the shoals than the other types of input. When there is moderate to high noise within the neighbors orientation, the shoal size increases, but school alignment decreases and rheotaxis does not improve. (Chicoli et al, 2016)