Origin of Schooling and Collective Environmental Adaptation in Zebrafish

Zebrafish exhibit intricate schooling behaviors when swimming as a group. Such collective motion serves profound ecological functions and continuously inspires the design of highly coordinated artificial systems. Although the features and functions of schooling have been extensively studied, how this behavior originates over the course of individual development remains unknown, limiting a comprehensive understanding of its biological consequences. To address this gap, we developed a cross-scale, multi-modal experimental platform to capture zebrafish schooling and integrated AI-based algorithms to track fine-scale body posture and eye movements. We find that schooling emerges within a discrete developmental window, coinciding with coordinated changes in locomotor architecture and visual perceptual capacity. Specifically, structural remodeling of the caudal fin, enhanced muscle bundling, and an expanded visual perceptual range together provide the physical and sensory basis for the stabilization of polarized group movement. Network analyses under different representational frameworks reveal that the biological function of schooling is a collective group strategy for adapting to the external geometric environment. Our work provides a fundamental explanation of zebrafish schooling from a developmental perspective and elucidates a collective strategy that could inform the design of underwater robot arrays.