Collaborative Research: Mechanisms Underlying Schooling Performance Evolution in Neotropical Tetras

Few who have observed large groups of schooling fish have failed to be impressed by their degree of coordination. Schools depend on rapid communication and synchronized movement among individuals to improve predator avoidance, foraging success, and swimming efficiency. Despite the ecological importance of schooling, it is not fully understood how these highly coordinated behaviors evolve or how interactions among individuals generate diverse group-level patterns. Further, schooling behavior is one of the most widespread and important forms of social coordination in fishes. This project will investigate the evolution and mechanics of schooling in Neotropical tetras, a diverse group of fishes that contains a range of behaviors from weakly aggregating species to highly synchronized schoolers. By examining both real-time coordination among individuals and broader evolutionary variation across species, the project will provide new insight into how complex social systems originate, function, and persist in nature. Findings from this work may also inform fields beyond biology, including the development of coordination and communication algorithms for autonomous vehicles and drone swarms. The project will support the training of graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and undergraduate students at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Southern California. Educational activities will include new teaching modules that integrate biomechanics, evolution, and collective behavior into biology and engineering courses, as well as a workshop on phylogenetic comparative methods for physiology research. This project will combine biomechanics, computational modeling, and comparative methods to investigate the mechanisms underlying the evolution of schooling behavior. The research has three primary objectives: (1) identify macroevolutionary trends in schooling performance across Neotropical tetras, (2) determine the individual-level behavioral rules that govern collective movement, and (3) evaluate how environmental and social factors influence schooling dynamics. High-speed video recordings collected in a custom experimental arena will be used to quantify kinematic traits describing individual and group movement patterns. Comparative analyses will integrate behavioral measurements with evolutionary relationships to test associations among schooling performance, ecology, morphology, and social structure. Species representing the range of observed schooling behaviors will be selected for additional experiments examining how environmental conditions and social interactions affect coordination dynamics. The project will also develop mathematical and computational frameworks linking individual behavioral interactions to emergent group properties and social network structure. Together, these approaches will provide a mechanistic and evolutionary understanding of collective movement in fishes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2609713 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Eva Kanso | Institution: University of Southern California, LOS ANGELES, CA | Award Amount: $396,865 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2609713 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2609713.html