Sonia Rey Planellas

• Professor
• Professor at University of Stirling

Studies show that Atlantic salmon in captivity adjust their distribution in sea cages based on environmental gradients like temperature, waves, and photoperiod. This study used a computer vision algorithm at three marine farms to analyse fish group swimming behaviour termed “activity” (measured in percent), which includes fish abundance, speed, and...

Early life experiences have long-lasting effects on behaviour and physiology, influencing development of adaptive natural behaviours. Enriching farmed environments encourages expression of natural behaviours in captive fish, promoting positive animal welfare, important for conducting valid and reproducible research and informing better management p...

2 behavioural monitoring approach to predict gill health and improve welfare in Atlantic salmon 3 (Salmo salar) aquaculture farms 4 5 Abstract: 20 21 As the aquaculture industry is growing, more sophisticated technology is required to monitor 22 farms and ensure sustainability and good fish welfare, in line with the precision livestock 23 farming c...

The aquaculture industry is constantly making efforts to improve fish welfare while maintaining the ethically sustainable farming practises. This work presents an enhanced tank environment designed for testing and developing novel combinations of technologies for analyzing and detecting behavioral responses in fish shoals/groups. Regular cameras ar...

Latin America (LATAM) plays an important role in the world's production of aquatic animals and is the second most productive region in the world. Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Perú contribute 87% of LATAM aquaculture production. The fish welfare in aquaculture is of increasing public concern globally, and LATAM is no exception, grow...

Farmed fish are commonly transported between various facilities by road vehicles, resulting in inevitable exposure to uncontrolled and oscillatory movements, likely exacerbated by poor road conditions. The effect of road quality on livestock has been studied during live transport, but research into the impact of motion has been rarely examined with...

The live transport of farmed fish is an important practice in Chinese aquaculture due to consumer preferences in its domestic market. However, live transport can be stressful for fish and may cause many welfare issues. This study aimed to examine the effects of transport density on the welfare of largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides). Adult fish...

Animal welfare assessments have struggled to investigate the emotional states of animals while focusing solely on available empirical evidence. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) may provide insights into an animal’s subjective experiences without compromising scientific rigor. Rather than assessing explicit, physical behaviours (i.e., what a...

Stress coping styles (SCS) are defined as a coherent set of individual physiological and behavioural differences in stress responses that are consistent across context and over time. Nowadays, an increased attention has been paid to fish welfare in aquaculture production and to consistent behavioural response to stress in captivity, since these asp...

Identifying Stress Coping Styles (SCS) in new species of interest for aquaculture has important implications for its future domestication and adaptation to captivity. Individual variability allows to select the potential positive characteristics for fish production. The main aim of this study was to identify phenotypic individual differences and ch...

The intensification of Scottish salmon farming has been associated with increasing demands for the monitoring and safeguarding of farmed salmon welfare. Continued growth of farm productivity, while avoiding adverse effects on salmon welfare, will require the development of effective welfare assessment tools. This paper reports on a survey of the Sc...

Ectothermic vertebrates, e.g. fish, maintain their body temperature within a specific physiological range mainly through behavioural thermoregulation. Here, we characterise the presence of daily rhythms of thermal preference in two phylogenetically distant and well-studied fish species: the zebrafish (Danio rerio), an experimental model, and the Ni...

Aim of study: To describe the common behaviour of flathead grey mullet (Mugil cephalus) under rearing conditions. Area of study: Tepic, Mexico. Material and methods: Behaviours exhibited by mullets were videorecorded with submersible cameras installed inside of three tanks. A total of 690 min per day (07:30 - 18:30 h) were recorded per tank durin...

The farming of decapod crustaceans is a key economic driver in many countries, with production reaching around 9.4 million tonnes (USD 69.3 billion) in 2018. These efforts are currently dominated by the farming of Pacific whiteleg shrimp, Penaeus vannamei, which translates into approximately 167 billion farmed P. vannamei being harvested annually....

Offshore aquaculture has gained momentum in recent years, and the production of an increasing number of marine fish species is being relocated offshore. Initially, predictions of the advantages that offshore aquaculture would present over nearshore farming were made without enough science-based evidence. Now, with more scientific knowledge, this re...

There is a growing scientific and legislative consensus that fish are sentient, and therefore have the capacity to experience pain and suffering. The assessment of the welfare of farmed fish is challenging due to the aquatic environment and the number of animals housed together. However, with increasing global production and intensification of aqua...

As aquaculture continues to grow and intensify, there is an increasing public concern over the welfare of farmed fish. Stress and production-related pathologies and repressed growth are examples of the challenges facing aquaculture, and their impacts could be minimised by effective identification of the early signs of impaired welfare. Many welfare...

Background In humans the stress response is known to be modulated to a great extent by psychological factors, particularly by the predictability and the perceived control that the subject has of the stressor. This psychological dimension of the stress response has also been demonstrated in animals phylogenetically closer to humans (i.e. mammals). H...

Aquaculture, or the farmed production of fish and shellfish, has grown rapidly, from supplying just 7% of fish for human consumption in 1974 to more than half in 2016. This rapid expansion has led to the growth of Precision Aquaculture concept that aims to exploit data-driven management of fish production, thereby improving the farmer's ability to...

Lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus L.) are increasingly being used as cleaner fish to control parasitic sea lice, one of the most important threats to salmon farming. However, lumpfish cannot survive feeding solely on sea lice, and their mortality in salmon net-pens can be high, which has welfare, ethical and economic implications. The industry is under...

Current European Union regulation explicitly states that farmed fish should be spared any avoidable pain, distress or suffering at the time of slaughter. It has been shown that fish suffer when they are killed in an ice slurry, the most common method of killing farmed fish in the Mediterranean. Thus, it is necessary to find a method of slaughtering...

Quantitative and qualitative measures of fish health and welfare are essential for management of both wild capture and aquaculture species. These measures include morphometric body condition indices, energetic condition and aquaculture operational welfare indicators (OWIs). Measures vary in ease of measurement (and may require destructive sampling)...

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. A number of factors make the planned expansion of the Atlantic salmon aquaculture industry unachievable in its current form, which is based primarily on sea cages in sheltered sea lochs. The...

This research described the common behaviour of grey mullet (Mugil cephalus) under rearing conditions. The different behaviours exhibited by mullets were videorecorded with submersible cameras installed inside of three tanks. A total of 690 minutes per day (07:30-18:30 hours) were recorded per tank during a week. Afterwards, an ethogram was elabora...

Background Consistent individual differences in behaviour, known as animal personalities, have been demonstrated within and across species. In fish, studies applying an animal personality approach have been used to resolve variation in physiological and molecular data suggesting a linkage, genotype-phenotype, between behaviour and transcriptome reg...

Offshore aquaculture has gained momentum in recent years and the production of more marine farmed fish species is moving offshore. Initially, predictions of the advantages that offshore aquaculture would present over near shore farming were made without enough science-based evidence. Now, with more scientific knowledge, this review revisits past pr...

In this article we first describe briefly how, like other ectotherms, wild fish promote effective functioning (for example, digestion and reproductive maturation) by moving through the temperature gradients that they experience in their natural habitats (showing behavioural thermoregulation). We then look in more detail at one particular example of...

We review knowledge on applications of sustained aerobic swimming as a tool to promote productivity and welfare of farmed fish species. There has been extensive interest in whether providing active species with a current to swim against can promote growth. The results are not conclusive but the studies have varied in species, life stage, swimming s...

Ensuring lumpfish health and welfare in salmon farms is vital to reduce the high mortality rates reported and to guarantee a high delousing efficiency. Recent observations of farmed lumpfish livers have shown colours ranging from pale (colours 1 and 2), through bright orange (colours 3 and 4), to dark reddish-brown (colours 5 and 6), some of which...

Background: Consistent individual differences in behaviour, known as animal personalities, have been demonstrated within and across species. In fish, studies applying an animal personality approach have been used to resolve variation in physiological and molecular data suggesting a linkage, genotype-phenotype, between behaviour and transcriptome re...

Background Consistent individual differences in behaviour, known as animal personalities, have been demonstrated within and across species. In fish, studies applying an animal personality approach have been used to resolve variation in physiological and molecular data suggesting a linkage, genotype-phenotype, between behaviour and transcriptome reg...

Background Consistent individual differences in behaviour, known as animal personalities, have been demonstrated within and across species. In fish, studies applying an animal personality approach have been used to resolve variation in physiological and molecular data suggesting a linkage, genotype-phenotype, between behaviour and transcriptome reg...

Background: Consistent individual differences in behaviour, known as animal personalities, have been demonstrated within and across species. In fish, studies applying an animal personality approach have been used to resolve variation in physiological and molecular data suggesting a linkage, genotype-phenotype, between behaviour and transcriptome re...

The role of cognitive factors in triggering the stress response is well established in humans and mammals (aka cognitive appraisal theory) but very seldom studied in other vertebrate taxa. Predictability is a key factor of the cognitive evaluation of stimuli. In this study, we tested the effects of stressor predictability on behavioral, physiologic...

Individual animals commonly adopt different stress coping styles that have been shown to impact reproductive success and differ between sexes (female/male) and origin (wild/hatchery). Hatchery reared Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) exhibit a behavioural reproductive dysfunction and a complete failure to spawn viable eggs. Hence, the present st...

Individuals differ in how they cope with stressful situations along a behavioural continuum, being proactive and reactive at the extremes of this continuum. Proactive individuals are usually bold, highly active and take risks, while reactive organisms are generally shy, exhibit low activity and avoid risky situations. Definitions of stress coping s...

Individual stress coping style (reactive, intermediate and proactive) was determined in 3 groups of 120 pit tagged European seabass using the hypoxia avoidance test. The same three groups (no change in social composition) were then reared according to the standards recommended for this species. Then, 127 days later, individuals initially characteri...

In fish, proactive and reactive individual stress copying styles (SCS) have been used to resolve variation in molecular expression data. Stress coping styles have been previously described in several stages of Solea senegalensis by validating for the species the use of standard behavioural screening tests. The present study aimed to link behavioura...

Scottish salmon is worth over £2 billion to the country’s economy. It is Scotland’s top food export and a particularly valuable product, at about 10% above the world price. Recently, the Scottish Government developed a plan that aims at doubling this production of salmon by 2030. However, a number of factors limit the progress of the industry in it...

Individuals in a fish population differ in key life-history traits such as growth rate and body size. This raises the question of whether such traits cluster along a fast-slow growth continuum according to a pace-of-life syndrome (POLS). Fish species like salmonids may develop a bimodal size distribution, providing an opportunity to study the relat...

There is great variation in the conservation status of the last habitats of the 13 salmon species Hucho hucho with long-term natural viable populations in the 14 Maramureş Mountains Nature Park, Eastern Carpathians (Romania). According to the 15 specific guidelines for Natura 2000, 42.11% are in good conservation status, 31.57% are 16 in average st...

There is great variation in the conservation status of the last habitats of the salmon species Hucho hucho with long-term natural viable populations in the Maramureş Mountains Nature Park, Eastern Carpathians (Romania). According to the specific guidelines for Natura 2000, 42.11% are in good conservation status, 31.57% are in average status and 26....

What zebrafish reveal about importance of looks vs personality in choosing a mate https://theconversation.com/what-zebrafish-reveal-about-importance-of-looks-vs-personality-in-choosing-a-mate-103611 When it comes to finding a suitable partner to raise a family, we know that our looks and the way we behave are both crucial to how well we succeed. If...

Individual differences in animal personality and external appearance such as colouration patterns have both been extensively studied separately. A significant body of research has explored many of pertinent ecological and biological aspects that can be affected by them and their impact upon fitness. Currently little is known about how both factors...

Juvenile growth at 30 dpf. Detailed significant differences in total length between personalities and colour phenotypes from 30 dpf juveniles. R WT-UAB vs P WT-UAB ***p<0.001; P WT-I vs P WT-UAB *p = 0.02; R WT-I vs P WT-UAB ***p<0.001. (TIF)

Experimental set-up of the risk-taking tank for the behavioural screening. The tank has a sheltered area (1/3 of the tank) with all sides and top covered. The open area covers 2/3 of the tank and represents a novel environment. Both sides are separated by a PVC sheet with a whole in the middle to allow the fish to cross between areas. (TIF)

Larval growth. Significant differences between colour phenotype and larval growth (p<0.001) were also observed for 21dpf larvae and juveniles (at 30dpf). *p <0.05 and **p<0.01. (TIF)

Larval growth at 21 dpf. Detailed significant differences in total length between personalities and colour phenotypes from 21 dpf larvae. R WT-UAB vs P WT-UAB ***p<0.001; P WT-I vs P WT-UAB **p = 0.002; R WT-I vs P WT-UAB ***p<0.001. (TIF)

Currently, cleaner fish are one of the most widely used sea lice control strategies in Atlantic salmon aquaculture. Two species are currently being farmed in North Atlantic countries, ballan wrasse (Labrus bergylta) and lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus), and the sector in most countries is rapidly expanding towards self-sufficiency. The species are ver...

Cleaner fish are increasingly being deployed in aquaculture as a means of biological control of parasitic sea lice, and consequently the farming of wrasse and lumpfish, the main cleaner fish species in current use in salmon farming, is now one of the fastest expanding aquaculture sectors with over 40 hatcheries in Norway alone. Cleaner Fish Biology...

A fever, or increased body temperature, is a symptom of inflammation, which is a complex defence reaction of the organism to pathogenic infections. After pathogens enter the body, immune cells secrete a number of agents, the functions of which stimulate the body to develop a functional immune and fever response. In mammals it is known that PGE2is t...

Woodruff (2017) analyzes structural homologies and functional equivalences between the brains of mammals and fish to understand where sentience and social cognition might reside in teleosts. He compares neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and behavioural correlates. I discuss current advances in the study of fish cognitive abilities and emotions, a...

Dominance is defined as the preferential access to limited resources. The present study aimed to characterise dominance in a non-aggressive flatfish species, the Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) by 1) identifying dominance categories and associated behaviours and 2) linking dominance categories (dominant and subordinate) with the abundance of s...

Experimental tank set up used for the place preference test (with sand) in pairs. A Preferred area (sand) and B white tiles forming a false bottom characterized the novel conditions. C Water inlet. D Water outlet. (TIF)

Spearman’s correlations from the three variables “Approaches, SAA and RTH” with feeding. (**) correlation was significant P < 0.05. (TIF)

Raw data of preliminary results in dyadic pairs of early Senegalese sole juveniles. (XLSX)

Classification of the different variables in groups according to Kendall’s concordance coefficient (W) for every group. (*P < 0.05) level of significance. (DOCX)

Group experimental tank set up used for feeding response and point feed delivery. A PVC tube to deliver the food. B Water Inlet. C Water Outlet. Different position areas (1–6) were shown by point lines. (TIF)

Principal component analysis of the different behaviours registered during the “feeding response test” in pairs. The three variables “Approaches, SAA and RTH” were grouped together and explained the 53% of the variance of the data. KMO (0.667), Bartlett’s test (P < 0.05) and X2 (133.523). (TIF)

Principal component analysis of the different behaviours registered during the feeding dominance test and place preference test (sand) in pairs. The three variables “Approaches, SAA and RTH” and the “TF and last” explained the 56% of the variance of the data in two different components. KMO (0.6), Bartlett’s test (P < 0.05) and X2 (116.806) (SPSS 1...

This study showed the possible linkage between Stress coping styles and gene transcription.

Personality tests on fish and their potential to boost aquaculture production,

The aim of this work was to characterize stress coping styles of Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) juveniles and breeders and to select an operational behavioural screening test (OBST) that can be used by the aquaculture industry to classify and select between behavioural phenotypes in order to improve production indicators. A total of 61 juveni...

Presentation of first six months of the Newton Fund Institutional links project.

Behavioural fever has been reported in different species of mobile ectotherms including the zebrafish, Danio rerio, in response to exogenous pyrogens. In this study we report, to our knowledge for the first time, upon the ontogenic onset of behavioural fever in zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae. For this, zebrafish larvae (from first feeding to juveni...

https://www.rsb.org.uk/biologist-opinion/159-biologist/opinion/1555-three-second-memory-sounds-fishy

ANIMALS Stress and Depression Seen in Farmed Salmon

Environmental temperature gradients provide habitat structure in which fish orientate and individual thermal choice may reflect an essential integrated response to the environment. The use of subtle thermal gradients likely impacts upon specific physiological and behavioural processes reflected as a suite of traits described by animal personality....

Abstract for a presentation on the FITFISH COST action annual conference in Belgrade, April 2016

Por primera vez se describen parámetros de dominancia en el lenguado a diferentes recursos limitados.

The question of whether animals other than humans can think and feel has been debated for centuries. Most of us would agree that humans have a level of consciousness, loosely defined as an ability to experience thoughts and emotions. But which other creatures have consciousness remains an open and controversial question.

Press release, http://serious-science.org/new-insights-into-emotions-in-fish-5555

The question of whether animals other than humans can think and feel has been debated for centuries. Most of us would agree that humans have a level of consciousness, loosely defined as an ability to experience thoughts and emotions. But which other creatures have consciousness remains an open and controversial question. We can also ask whether the...

Common carp Cyprinus carpio displaying proactive or reactive stress coping styles were acclimated to two environmental regimes (low oxygen and low temperature), and selected groups were tested for response to an inflammatory challenge (Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide, LPS). Plasma glucose and lactate levels were measured, as were selected C. ca...

Whether fishes are sentient beings remains an unresolved and controversial question. Among characteristics thought to reflect a low level of sentience in fishes is an inability to show stress-induced hyperthermia (SIH), a transient rise in body temperature shown in response to a variety of stressors. This is a real fever response, so is often refer...

Whether fish are sentient beings remains an unresolved and controversial question. Among characteristics thought to reflect a low level of sentience in fish is an inability to show stress-induced hyperthermia (SIH), or emotional fever, a transient rise in body temperature shown in response to a variety of stressors. It has been suggested that the c...

Individual differences in physiological and behavioural responses to stressors are increasingly recognised as adaptive variation and thus raw material for evolution and fish farming improvements including selective breeding. Such individual variation has been evolutionarily conserved and is present in all vertebrate taxa including fish. In farmed a...

It has been widely supported that individual animals express different strategies to cope with environmental challenge. In ectothermic species such as fish, individuals must use behavioral thermoregulation mechanisms to optimize physiological performance. In the present study, thermal preference was tested in groups of wild-type zebrafish, Danio re...

Resolving phenotype variation in response to environmental perturbation is key to understanding biological adaptation. Stress coping styles (SCS) can be used to resolve variation in the transcriptome. Here we combined behavioral screening and gene expression using mRNAs correlated to SCS across three fish species.

The COPEwell project aims is to develop a new integrative framework for the study of fish welfare based on the concepts of allostasis, appraisal and coping styles. The project focuses on the understanding of how fish experience their world, and what effects early life experiences have on later development and coping abilities.

Resolving phenotype variation within a population in response to environmental perturbation is central to understanding biological adaptation. Relating meaningful adaptive changes at the level of the transcriptome requires the identification of processes that have a functional significance for the individual. This remains a major objective toward u...

Behavioural fever has been reported in different species of ectotherms in response to exogenous pyrogens. This response depends on different intrinsic and environmental factors as well as developmental stage. For this study, zebrafish larvae (18-20 dpf) were initially placed in a thermal gradient, which allowed them to select their preferred temper...

Resolving phenotype variation within a population in response to environmental perturbation is central to understanding biological adaptation. Relating meaningful adaptive changes at the level of the transcriptome requires the identification of processes that have a functional significance for the individual. This remains a major objective toward u...

El lenguado senegalés es una especie comercialmente importante en el sur de Europa. No obstante, los machos G1 presentan disfunciones reproductivas relativas al comportamiento. Se ha establecido que los peces afrontan las situaciones estrés de forma variable. En el presente estudio se analizaron 6 pruebas para identificar el tipo de afrontamiento a...