Hovering, the ability to maintain a stationary position in fluid, is essential for many fish species during prey capture, habitat exploration, and mating. While traditionally assumed to be energetically inexpensive for fishes with a swim bladder, the metabolic costs and morphological factors influencing postural stability during hovering remain poorly understood. Hovering requires fishes to counteract small instabilities in position and orientation, often through continuous adjustments using their fins and body. To examine the energetic consequences of this active stabilization, we measured body posture, fin kinematics, and metabolic rates in 13 near-neutrally buoyant fish species during both hovering and resting. Our results show that hovering nearly doubles metabolic rates compared to resting, and species with greater separation between the center of mass and center of buoyancy and increased caudal fin activity exhibit higher energetic costs. In contrast, species with more posteriorly positioned pectoral fins and lower length-to-depth ratios show reduced hovering costs. Our findings demonstrate that, despite morphological traits that promote instability, fishes maintain posture and position through fine-scale fin control—at a significant energetic expense. This study suggests that hovering is a costly behavior that likely plays a key role in shaping the evolution of fish morphology and locomotor strategies.

Cyanobacterial blooms are intensifying worldwide due to eutrophication and climate change, increasing cyanotoxin exposure to aquatic organisms. This study investigated the physiological, biochemical, and behavioural impacts of cyanobacterial blooms on the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a widespread mesopredatory fish. Adult sticklebacks were exposed for two weeks to naturally collected bloom material dominated by toxic Nodularia spumigena, non-toxic Aphanizomenon sp., or a 50:50 mix. We measured toxin accumulation (NOD_eq), hepatic enzymatic activities (ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase [EROD], glutathione S-transferases [GSTs], glutathione reductase [GR], and catalase [CAT]), and escape swimming performance (centre-of-mass velocity, angular velocity, distance, and duration) in a multiparametric endpoints approach. Sub-lethal toxin levels in muscle tissue ranged from 0.006 to 0.077 µg g⁻¹ d.w. Results showed that fish exposed to toxic-dominated treatments showed significantly elevated EROD activity (up to 200 % increase), moderate increases in GR and GSTs, and reduced CAT activity compared to controls. Notably, distance travelled during escape responses was reduced by ∼50 % in the high-toxicity treatment and showed an inverse correlation with EROD activity, suggesting a trade-off between detoxification effort and swimming performance. Overall, our results demonstrate that EROD is a sensitive biomarker for cyanotoxin exposure in fish under natural bloom conditions. This finding highlights the need to consider natural cyanotoxin effects when interpreting environmental assessments, particularly given the projected increase in bloom frequency and severity under future climate scenarios.

Shoaling behavior is known to increase survival rates during attacks from predators, minimize foraging time, favor mating, and potentially increase locomotor efficiency. The onset of shoaling typically occurs during the larval phase, but it is unclear how it may improve across ontogenetic stages in forage fishes. Warming is known to increase metabolic rates during locomotion in solitary fish, and shoaling species may adjust their collective behavior to offset the elevated costs of swimming at higher temperatures. In this study, we quantified the effects of warming on shoaling performance across the ontogeny of a small forage fish, zebrafish (Danio rerio) at different speeds. Shoals of larval, juvenile, and adult zebrafish were acclimated at two temperatures (28°C and 32°C), and metabolic rates were quantified prior to and following nonexhaustive exercise at high speed. Shoals of five individuals were filmed in a flow tank to analyze the kinematics of collective movement. We found that zebrafish improve shoaling swimming performance from larvae to juveniles to adults. In particular, shoals become more cohesive, and both tail beat frequency (TBF) and head-to-tail amplitude decrease with ontogeny. Early life stages have higher thermal sensitivity in metabolic rates and TBF especially at high speeds, when compared to adults. Our study shows that shoaling behavior and thermal sensitivity improve as zebrafish shift from larval to juvenile to adult stages.