{
  "abstract": "Unpredictable chronic stress (UCS) produces heterogeneous behavioural outcomes, but identifying resilient individuals remains challenging because post-stress behaviour is multidimensional and classification depends on the analytical framework. We characterised novelty-evoked exploration in 178 adult zebrafish (89 unstressed reference, 89 UCS-exposed) using four Novel Tank Test variables: distance travelled, line crossings, upper-zone entries and upper-zone time, from a historical LAPCOM dataset from four independent cohorts. Behaviour was robustly normalised to control distributions within cohorts. In the unstressed population, principal component analysis revealed a dominant exploratory gradient (PC1 = 74.9%; PC2 = 18.7%), whereas weighted k-nearest-neighbour Louvain analysis yielded a stable two-profile partition. However, null-model inference and resampling did not support discrete behavioural populations, indicating a predominantly continuous reference architecture. UCS significantly redistributed individuals within this architecture (PERMANOVA: F(1,173) = 8.10, R2= 0.0423, p = 0.0016), reducing occupancy of the higher-exploration reference profile from 55.1% to 24.7%, while multivariate dispersion, Mahalanobis distance and global correlation structure showed no detectable differences. De novo Louvain analysis identified lower- and higher-exploration configurations, but correspondence with the control reference was asymmetric: all 44 lower-exploration fish mapped to the lower reference profile, whereas only 22 of 45 higher-exploration fish mapped to the higher reference profile. Thus, higher exploration after UCS was insufficient to define a resilient-like response. Across five analytical frameworks, resilient assignments ranged from 9 to 45 individuals and susceptible assignments from 23 to 68, with partial individual-level convergence. These findings support reference-integrated behavioural stratification for identifying resilient- and susceptible-like candidates for physiological, cellular and molecular validation.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 6,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "F. Fuentealba-Villarroel"
    },
    {
      "name": "L. M. Bastos"
    },
    {
      "name": "M. Gallas-Lopes"
    },
    {
      "name": "A. P. Herrmann"
    },
    {
      "name": "D. Zancan"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "A. Piato"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dkd9p3z3x763h.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.10.29.762878",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.29.762878v1.full",
  "id": "dkd9p3z3x763h",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.29.762878v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "neuroscience"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.29.762878v1.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-29",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dkd9p3z3x763h.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-04T00:21:35Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.10.29.762878",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.29.762878v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:neuroscience",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Unpredictable chronic stress redistributes novelty-evoked exploratory space use and yields method-dependent identification of resilient-like archetypes in zebrafish",
  "title_text": "Unpredictable chronic stress redistributes novelty-evoked exploratory space use and yields method-dependent identification of resilient-like archetypes in zebrafish",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-05T00:21:01Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dkd9p3z3x763h",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}