Collective behaviour, such as shoaling in fish, benefits individuals through a variety of activities such as social information exchange and anti-predator defence. Human driven disturbance (e.g. anthropogenic noise) is known to affect the behaviour and physiology of individual animals, but the disruption of social aggregations of fish remains poorly understood. Anthropogenic noise originates from a variety of activities and differs in acoustic structure, dominant frequencies, and spectral complexity. The response of groups of fish may differ greatly, depending on the type of noise, and how it is perceived (e.g. threatening or attractive). In a controlled laboratory study, high resolution video tracking in combination with fine scale acoustic mapping was used to investigate the response of groups of European minnows (Phoxinus phoxinus) to signals of differing acoustic complexity (sinewave tones vs octave band noise) under low (150 Hz) and high (2200 Hz) frequencies. Fish startled and decreased their mean group swimming speed under all four treatments, with low frequency sinewave tones having the greatest influence on group behaviour. The shoals exhibited spatial avoidance during both low frequency treatments, with more time spent in areas of lower acoustic intensity than expected. This study illustrates how noise can influence the spatial distribution and social dynamics within groups of fish, and owing to the high potential for freshwater aquatic environments to be influenced by anthropogenic activity, wider consequences for populations should be further investigated.

集体行为，例如在鱼群中浅滩，通过各种活动（例如社会信息交流和反捕食者防御）使个人受益。众所周知，人类驱动的干扰（例如人为噪声）会影响个体动物的行为和生理机能，但对鱼类社会聚集的破坏仍知之甚少。人为噪声源于各种活动，在声学结构、主频和频谱复杂性方面各不相同。鱼群的反应可能会有很大差异，这取决于噪音的类型和感知方式（例如. 威胁或有吸引力）。在一项受控实验室研究中，高分辨率视频跟踪结合精细尺度声学映射被用于研究欧洲小鱼群 ( Phoxinus phoxinus ) 对不同声学复杂性（正弦波音调与倍频程噪声）在低 (150 Hz) 和高 (2200 Hz) 频率下。在所有四种处理下，鱼受​​到惊吓并降低了它们的平均群体游泳速度，低频正弦波对群体行为的影响最大。在两种低频处理期间，浅滩都表现出空间回避，在声强度较低的区域花费的时间比预期的多。这项研究说明了噪声如何影响鱼群内的空间分布和社会动态，并且由于淡水水生环境受人为活动影响的可能性很大，因此应进一步调查对种群的更广泛影响。