Using zebrafish as a model organism to study winner and loser effect

Abstract: Our past experiences influence the way we cope with things at present. Experience effect is that prior experience which affects the behaviour pattern later on. The outcome of prior agonistic confrontation decides the winner and loser in a sequential fight such that winners have higher probability to win again and losers have higher probability to lose again, which is called winner and loser effects. Winner and loser effects have been described in many animals and studied in detail with the established aggressive model in zebrafish. However, none of the studies considered of individual variation, the personality or behavioural syndromes especially different coping styles such as shy versus bold, proactive versus reactive in zebrafish. Genetic modulation provides us with an option:  spiegeldanio strain (spd) with aggression-boldness syndrome can be used to study the winner loser effect in lab. Pairing spd with wild-type strain (AB) to let them fight with each other and their own mirror images separately can help us understand better about the relationship between personality and winning/losing experience effect and contribute to decoding the molecular mechanism behind this.