Sex and the Housing: Effects on Behavior, Cortisol Levels and Weight in Zebrafish.

Sex and the Housing: Effects on Behavior, Cortisol Levels and Weight in Zebrafish. Behav Brain Res. 2017 Aug 16;: Authors: Reolon GK, de Melo GM, da Rosa JGDS, Barcellos LJG, Bonan CD Abstract Studies with zebrafish use acclimatizing periods of at least one week immediately before the experiments. During this time, animals can be housed in sexually segregated conditions (only females or males in the tank) or in mixed-sex conditions (both sexes in the tank). The influence of sex and housing conditions regarding the presence of one or two sexes is largely unknown in zebrafish. Our aim was to evaluate the influence that sex and housing regarding the sex of animals had in the open tank task, in the inhibitory avoidance memory test, in cortisol levels and weight in zebrafish. Four groups of animals were used: 1) segregated housed females (only females were kept in the tank); 2) segregated housed males (only males were kept in the tank); 3) mixed-sex housed females (only females were analyzed from a tank containing 50% ratio of each sex); 4) mixed-sex housed males (only males were analyzed from a tank containing 50% ratio of each sex). Males showed higher total distance travelled and mean speed when compared to females. In the inhibitory avoidance memory, sexually segregated animals had higher latencies than their mixed-sex counterparts in the 1day test and sexually segregated females presented a memory that persisted longer and was able t...
Source: Behavioural Brain Research - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research
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