The behavior of schools of zebrafish(Danio rerio) was studied in acute toxicity environments.Behavioral features were extracted and a method for water quality assessment using support vector machine(SVM) was de-veloped.The behavioral parameters of fish were recorded and analyzed during one hour in an environment of a 24-h half-lethal concentration(LC50) of a pollutant.The data were used to develop a method to evaluate water quality,so as to give an early indication of toxicity.Four kinds of metal ions(Cu2+,Hg2+,Cr6+,and Cd2+) were used for toxicity testing.To enhance the efficiency and accuracy of assessment,a method combining SVM and a genetic algorithm(GA) was used.The results showed that the average prediction accuracy of the method was over 80% and the time cost was acceptable.The method gave satisfactory results for a variety of metal pollutants,demonstrating that this is an effec-tive approach to the classification of water quality.
