Integrating Animal Behaviors into Sustainable Aquaculture

Dear Colleagues,

The aquaculture industry produces a large amount of high-quality animal protein annually and plays an important role in supporting the continuous growth of the global population. However, under the background of global climate changes and human activity increases, the constraints on various resources (e.g., water, energy, space) are becoming apparent. In recent years, therefore, the sustainability and uncertainty of aquaculture have been repeatedly proposed and discussed. Generally, the sustainable development of aquaculture needs to particularly consider the following aspects: the worries for the welfare status of aquaculture animals from the public, the practical aquaculture modes to increase production outcomes (including growth rate, feed conversion efficiency, fillet quality, disease resistance, reproductive success), the efficient methods or techniques for reducing maintenance cost of aquaculture systems, and the potential influences of aquaculture systems on other natural or artificial ecosystems. One novel perspective to meet the above-mentioned requirements is integrating animal behaviors into aquaculture production. The field of animal ecology has achieved huge progress in recent years, especially in the research directions of animal personality, escape strategy, life skills training, and behavioral responses to global changes. Now, how to link animal behaviors in the aquaculture context to improve the sustainable development of aquaculture has got increasing attention from various scientific communities. This Special Issue plans to give an overview of recent advances in the fields of aquatic animal behaviors and sustainable aquaculture. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

1. The methods to quantify animal behaviors in aquaculture systems, e.g., computer vision and machine learning.
2. The practical methods to decrease undesired behaviors (e.g., cannibalism) in the aquaculture context.
3. The potential of applying animal behaviors to evaluate animal welfare and other characteristics of sustainable aquaculture.
4. The theoretical framework or practical attempts focusing on how to integrate animal behaviors into sustainable aquaculture.

Dr. Zonghang Zhang
Prof. Dr. Xiumei Zhang
Guest Editors

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• sustainable aquaculture
• animal behavior
• animal welfare
• animal personality
• production efficiency