The color discrimination can confer survival advantages by helping animals to find nutritious food and shelter and to avoid predator. Zebrafish as a social species, data on innate color preference in shoals remain controversial and there are limited data for this organism. Here we showed that, when given a choice among two color combinations (R-Y, R-G, Y-G, B-G, B-R, B-Y), shoals of zebrafish exhibited a complex pattern of color preference and the order of RYGB preference was R>Y>G, B>G. By contrast, the individual zebrafish showed marked changes, completely losing their preference for all the tested color combinations. To investigate the role of shoaling behavior in color preference, we selected a D1-receptor antagonist (SCH23390), which could disrupt social preference and decrease social interaction in zebrafish. Interestingly, the shoals that were treated by SCH23390 showed no color preference for all color combinations. Our findings indicate that social interaction is involved in color-driven behavior in zebrafish, and reveal the possible mechanisms that the dopaminergic system may contribute to innate color preference in shoals of zebrafish.

Social interaction influences innate color preference of zebrafish shoals