I am interested in animal social behaviour and evolution of sociality. A lot of work has been done on mammals (predominantly primates) and birds but there is a dearth of knowledge on fishes (especially freshwater fishes) though they are a very speciose taxon. To bridge this gap, I am looking into the social dynamics of wild zebrafish shoals. I have chosen zebrafish because they are highly gregarious species and they are found in shoals ranging from about ten fish to thousands. Given the small size and its availability in this region, it is a tractable model species to study sociality in fishes. Also, its presence in many parts of Bengal and elsewhere in India allows us to compare variation in social behaviour and its plausible ecological drivers (predation pressure, resource distribution etc.), something which I am also interested in looking at. I plan to use tools derived from Social Network Theory to quantify the social structures observed.