What Does Math Have to Do With Patterns in Fish?

When you think of fish, what comes to mind? Maybe you think of pet goldfish, movie characters like Dory or Nemo, or trout in a local river. One of the things that all these fish have in common is patterns in their skin. Nemo sports black and white stripes in his orange skin, and trout have spots. Even goldfish have a pattern—but it is just plain gold (and kinda boring). Why do some fish have stripes, others have spots, and others have plain patterns? It turns out that this is a tricky question, so scientists need tools from several subjects to answer it. In this paper, we use biology, math, and computer coding to help figure out how fish get different skin patterns.