Female adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) show higher levels of anxiety-like behavior than males, but do not differ in learning and memory capacity

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are widely used as a translational model for human neuropsychiatric conditions. Many studies have not considered sex differences in their analyses. Here, we studied sex differences of adult zebrafish in two behavioral domains: Anxiety and Memory. To assess whether sex influences anxiety-like responses, we used two different behavioral protocols, the novel tank diving task and the light-dark test. To assess sex differences in learning and memory tasks, we explored two memory domains, short-term spatial memory (free movement pattern Y-maze task) and short-term fear memory (Pavlovian fear-conditioning task). Although we did not find any significant difference in learning and memory tasks, female zebrafish showed robust increases in anxiety-like behavioral endpoints in both anxiety tests. Overall, our data suggest that zebrafish is a sensitive model to work with sex differences when modeling anxiety-related disorders and this should be an important factor to consider in different experimental designs.