Mechanisms of Social Behavior in the Anti-Social Blind Cavefish ( <i>Astyanax mexicanus</i> )
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The evolution of social behavior in Astyanax mexicanus , which exists as a sighted, surface-dwelling morph and a blind, cave-dwelling morph, provides a model for understanding how environmental pressures shape social behaviors. We compared the shoaling behavior of blind and surface A. mexicanus to that of zebrafish ( Danio rerio ), and examined the effects of nutritional state and the neuropeptides isotocin (IT) and arginine vasotocin (AVT) on their social behavior. Blind cavefish not only fail to form shoals, but actively avoid conspecifics, with hunger further diminishing their social cohesion. Administration of low doses of AVT and an IT antagonist partially restored social behavior in blind cavefish, reducing distances between individuals, whereas surface fish exhibited minimal or opposite responses to these hormonal manipulations. Our findings suggest that the loss of schooling behavior in blind cavefish is not a consequence of visual impairment alone, as they remain capable of detecting and responding to others. Instead, this behavior likely reflects an adaptive response to their resource-poor, predator-free cave environment, where shoaling may be disadvantageous. The differing responses to social hormones between the morphs indicate that blind cavefish may have lost the motivation to shoal rather than the ability, highlighting how ecological pressures can shape social behavior.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".