Lawrence C. 2012. Environmental enrichment and the laboratory zebrafish. The Enrichment Record 11, 11-15.

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a small tropical minnow that is playing an increasingly big role in the world of scientific research. In the last year alone, researchers working with this diminutive fish from south Asia have discovered a new drug that helps human patients restore their immune function after chemotherapy or bone marrow transplant (Goessling et al., 2011), and identified potential new therapies for both melanoma (White et al., 2011) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Kawahara et al., 2011). It is because of advances like these that it is, today, quite common for a typical animal research facility to house hundreds, if not thousands of zebrafish, alongside more traditional laboratory animals like mice and rats. This new landscape where zebrafish and other aquatic animals are now playing a prominent role in the laboratory animal field is exciting, dynamic - and extremely challenging for institutional animal care and use programs. Caring for and managing fish populations in a controlled environment is an entirely different proposition than it is for traditional mammalian species; it requires a knowledge base and skill set that many laboratory animal professionals do not possess. To make matters even more complicated, the science of husbandry and management for the zebrafish is surprisingly poorly developed (Lawrence, 2007). In truth, relatively little is known about the biology and behavior of the animal as it relates to their maintenance and care in the laboratory settings. Indeed, most of the 'standard methods' (or what passes for them) for care frequently cited in the literature (e.g. Westerfield, 2007) are only, at best, loosely based on the scant scientific information of this nature that is available, and have never been thoroughly vetted by systematic research. There is a growing movement afoot to address these shortcomings (Lawrence, 2011), but the field is still woefully behind where it needs to be on this front.