Terrestrial jumping assay for adult zebrafish as a potential tool to assess motor, affective and drug-evoked phenotypes.

Authors

Ruyue Bai, Zichen Li, Yimeng Wang, Gaomuyi Wang, Yingze Wang, Jiale Chu, Haojun Yao, Ni Luh Nitya Sawitri, Zhike Fu, Qinglu Suo, Huiling Cai, Chongguang Zhao, Qinming Lu, Zhixuan He, Xilei Jiang, Yixuan Pang, Longen Yang, Jiahao Cui, Murilo S de Abreu, Adam Michael Stewart, Valentina N Perfilova, Allan V Kalueff

Published in

Behavioural brain research. Pages 116414. Aug 12, 2026. Epub Aug 12, 2026.

Abstract

Terrestrial jumping is a common, evolutionarily conserved 'survival' fish behavior. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are widely used as a model organism in CNS research and drug discovery. Here, we explore the potential utility of the terrestrial jumping assay to characterize behavioral effects of a wide range of pharmacological and other experimental manipulations in adult zebrafish. For this, zebrafish were individually placed in a large glass tank and their jumping behavioral profile was assessed for 60s by video-recording and subsequent off-line analyses of escape-like jumps and immobility episodes in a slow mode. Treatment groups including acute exposure to ethanol, arecoline, caffeine, alarm pheromone and live predator (Nandus nandus), as well as chronic exposure to fluoxetine, reserpine, cuprizone and rotenone. Overall, the assay shows high sensitivity to various experimental manipulations, supporting the utility of the terrestrial jumping assay as a fast, low-cost and single-trial behavioral paradigm to assess both motor phenotypes and affective-like responses in zebrafish.

PMID:
42586488
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 13 Aug 2026.

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