Fig. 3

(A) Shoaling test. The test involves placing a group of conspecific fish in a novel tank for 5 min, after an acclimatization time. (B) The shoal is video recorded for behavioural analysis, and to quantify social cohesion, which is measured by the average mean distance between members of the group. (C) The heat maps show that control zebrafish exhibited a significantly higher frequency of proximity to a group of zebrafish compared with sacs^−/− zebrafish. Furthermore, pretreatment with TUDCA improved the sociability of sacs-deficient fish compared with untreated mutant fish. (D) [(Distance Ratio% = distance travelled in the conspecific sector /by the total distance travelled) ×100] and [(Time Ratio %=Time spent in conspecific sector/ total time observed) ​ ×100]. Data are presented as box plots, where the central line represents the median, the box indicates the interquartile range (IQR), and the whiskers extend to 1.5 times the IQR. (N = 5 males and 5 females per experimental group). *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 and ****p < 0.0001 were calculated by ANOVA followed by Tukey’s multiple comparison test. ns, no significant difference. Images were created using BioRender, a scientific image and illustration software.