It is about time: neural temporal scaling accounts for robust hunting behavior across temperatures

Abstract

Animals are often required to maintain stable performance in critical behaviors despite environmental fluctuations. Temperature broadly affects neural activity, and even localized shifts in brain temperature can alter behavior. However, whether widespread changes across the brain, such as those experienced by ectotherms, disrupt survival-critical behaviors remains unclear. Here, we show that larval zebrafish maintain robust hunting performance across a 10{degrees}C ecological range. Although behavior accelerates with temperature, spatial parameters, such as bout distance and turn angle, remain stable. This invariance results from coordinated adjustments in tail beat frequency and movement duration. Brain-wide calcium imaging revealed that behavioral temporal scaling is mirrored at the level of single neurons. A simple rate model showed that temperature-dependent changes in neural time constants can account for compensatory tail dynamics, enabling stability without active regulation. These findings suggest that neural temporal scaling can preserve performance under diffuse temperature fluctuations, supporting robust behavior in natural environments.