Research

Schooling Relies on Vision

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For fish, collective motions like schooling rely on a few mechanisms, including flow sensing and — as beautifully demonstrated in this experiment — vision. Researchers used an infrared camera to track fish motions both in light and dark conditions and compared how orderly the school of fish was in each. As expected, the school’s motion was much more orderly when the fish could see one another clearly. Interestingly, the researchers then ran an experiment in which the illumination rose continuously from dark to fully bright. The fish school’s organization grew continuously with the light! The better they could see one another, the more organized their schooling. (Video and research credit: L. Baptiste et al.)

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