People

David Bierbach

Postdoctoral Researcher

Behavioral Biology
Fish Behavior

HU Berlin

 

Email:
david.bierbach@hu-berlin.de

 

Photo: SCIoI

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David Bierbach

David Bierbach

Photo: SCIoI

David Bierbach is a biologist working on topics that range from individual differences to large-scale collective behaviors. He integrates field-based studies with analytical and experimental approaches in the laboratory. Through his highly interdisciplinary work, he has developed several experimental techniques to study animal behavior in the most standardized ways, from video playbacks and computer animations to the use of bio-mimetic robots. His main research objectives are tropical freshwater fish like clonal mollies (Poecilia formosa), guppies (P. reticulata) or sulfur mollies (P. sulphuraria). At SCIoI, he is investigating how fish use anticipation in their social interactions. The overall aim is to implement this knowledge to build better bio-mimetic robots and social interaction algorithms. He mainly works in Project 41. Further more he supports Project 10 and co-supervises two projects dealing with information processing and information spread in larger collectives (SCIoI Project 11 and SCIoI Project 12). He is also a team member of Project 21, and Project 58.


Projects

David Bierbach is member of Project 41, Project 10, Project 11, Project 21, Project 58.


Pacher, K., Hernández-Román, N., Juarez-Lopez, A., Jiménez-Jiménez, J. E., Lukas, J., Sevinchan, Y., Krause, J., Arias-Rodríguez, L., & Bierbach, D. (2024). Thermal tolerance in an extremophile fish from Mexico is not affected by environmental hypoxia. Biology Open. https://doi.org/10.1242/bio.060223
Sevinchan, Y., Vollmoeller, C., Pacher, K., Bierbach, D., Krause, J., & Romanczuk, P. (2024). Modelling and Analysing Collective Waving Behaviour in Large Fish Shoals. DPG Spring Meeting 2024, SKM (talk).
Ehlman, S., Scherer, U., Bierbach, D., Stärk, L., Beese, M., & Wolf, M. (2024). Developmental arcs of plasticity in whole movement repertoires of a clonal fish. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.07.570540
Sevinchan, Y., Vollmoeller, C., Pacher, K., Bierbach, D., Krause, J., & Romanczuk, P. (2024). Spatio-temporal Dynamics of Social Contagion in Bio-inspired Interaction Networks. SAB 2024 (Peer-Reviewed Conference).
Musiolek, L., Bierbach, D., Weimar, N., Hamon, M., Krause, J., & Hafner, V. V. (2024). Evolving Artificial Neural Networks for Simulating Fish Social Interactions. EvoStar2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56852-7_10
Scherer, U., Ehlman, S. M., Bierbach, D., Krause, J., & Wolf, M. (2023). Reproductive individuality of clonal fish raised in near-identical environments and its link to early-life behavioral individuality. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43069-6
Lukas, J., Krause, J., Träger, A. S., Piotrowski, J. M., Romanczuk, P., Sprekeler, H., Arias-Rodriguez, L., Krause, S., Schutz, C., & Bierbach, D. (2023). Multispecies collective waving behaviour in fish. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0069
Gómez-Nava, L., Lange, R. T., Klamser, P. P., Lukas, J., Arias-Rodriguez, L., Bierbach, D., Krause, J., Sprekeler, H., & Romanczuk, P. (2023). Fish shoals resemble a stochastic excitable system driven by environmental perturbations. Nature Physics. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01916-1
Ehlman, S., Scherer, U., Bierbach, D., Francisco, F., Laskowski, K., Krause, J., & Wolf, M. (2023). Leverging big data to uncover the eco-evolutionary factors shaping behavioural development. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.2115
Sevinchan, Y., Bierbach, D., Gómez-Nava, L., Krause, J., & Romanczuk, P. (2023). Self-organized Criticality in Animal Collectives. DPG Spring Meeting 2023, SKM (poster).
Scherer, U., Laskowki, K., Kressler, M., Ehlman, S. M., Wolf, M., & Bierbach, D. (2023). Perceived predation risk affects the development of among-individual behavioral variation in a naturally clonal freshwater fish. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.25.568653
Makowicz, A. M., Bierbach, D., Richardson, C., & Hughes, K. A. (2022). Cascading indirect genetic effects in a clonal vertebrate. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 289(1978). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0731
Laskowski, K., Bierbach, D., Jolles, J., Doran, C., & Wolf, M. (2022). The emergence and development of behavioral individuality in clonal fish. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34113-y
Doran, C., Bierbach, D., Lukas, J., Klamser, P., Landgraf, T., Klenz, H., Habedank, M., Arias-Rodriguez, L., Krause, S., Romanczuk, P., & Krause, J. (2022). Fish waves as emergent collective antipredator behavior. Current Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.11.068
Bierbach, D., Gómez-Nava, L., Francisco, F. A., Lukas, J., Musiolek, L., Hafner, V. V., Landgraf, T., Romanczuk, P., & Krause, J. (2022). Live fish learn to anticipate the movement of a fish-like robot. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/ac8e3e
Lukas, J., Kalinkat, G., Miesen, F. W., Landgraf, T., Krause, J., & Bierbach, D. (2021). Consistent Behavioral Syndrome Across Seasons in an Invasive Freshwater Fish. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.583670
Lukas, J., Auer, F., Goldhammer, T., Krause, J., Romanczuk, P., Klamser, P., Arias-Rodriguez, L., & Bierbach, D. (2021). Diurnal Changes in Hypoxia Shape Predator-Prey Interaction in a Bird-Fish System. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.619193
Lukas, J., Romanczuk, P., Klenz, H., Klamser, P., Arias Rodriguez, L., Krause, J., & Bierbach, D. (2021). Acoustic and visual stimuli combined promote stronger responses to aerial predation in fish. Behavioral Ecology, arab043. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arab043
Lu, Y., Bierbach, D., Ormanns, J., Warren, W. C., Walter, R. B., & Schartl, M. (2021). Fixation of allelic gene expression landscapes and expression bias pattern shape the transcriptome of the clonal Amazon molly. Genome Research. https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.268870.120
Laskowski, K. L., Seebacher, F., Habedank, M., Meka, J., & Bierbach, D. (2021). Two Locomotor Traits Show Different Patterns of Developmental Plasticity Between Closely Related Clonal and Sexual Fish. Frontiers in Physiology, 12, 740604. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2021.740604
Klamser, P. P., Gómez-Nava, L., Landgraf, T., Jolles, J. W., Bierbach, D., & Romanczuk, P. (2021). Impact of Variable Speed on Collective Movement of Animal Groups. Frontiers in Physics, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2021.715996
Demandt, N., Bierbach, D., Kurvers, R. H. J. M., Krause, J., Kurtz, J., & Scharsack, J. P. (2021). Parasite infection impairs the shoaling behaviour of uninfected shoal members under predator attack. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-021-03080-7
Bierbach, D., Wenchel, R., Gehrig, S., Wersing, S., O’Connor, O. L., & Krause, J. (2021). Male Sexual Preference for Female Swimming Activity in the Guppy (Poecilia reticulata). Biology, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/biology10020147
Bierbach, D., Francisco, F., Lukas, J., Landgraf, T., Maxeiner, M., Romanczuk, P., Musiolek, L., Hafner, V. V., & Krause, J. (2021). Biomimetic robots promote the 3Rs Principle in animal testing. ALIFE 2021: The 2021 Conference on Artificial Life. https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00375
Landgraf, T., Gebhardt, G. H. W., Bierbach, D., Romanczuk, P., Musiolek, L., Hafner, V. V., & Krause, J. (2020). Animal-in-the-Loop: Using Interactive Robotic Conspecifics to Study Social Behavior in Animal Groups. Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-control-061920-103228
Jolles, J. W., Weimar, N., Landgraf, T., Romanczuk, P., Krause, J., & Bierbach, D. (2020). Group-level patterns emerge from individual speed as revealed by an extremely social robotic fish. Biology Letters, 16(9), 20200436. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0436
Bierbach, D., Mönck, H. J., Lukas, J., Habedank, M., Romanczuk, P., Landgraf, T., & Krause, J. (2020). Guppies Prefer to Follow Large (Robot) Leaders Irrespective of Own Size. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2020.00441
Bierbach, D., Krause, S., Romanczuk, P., Lukas, J., Arias-Rodriguez, L., & Krause, J. (2020). An interaction mechanism for the maintenance of fission–fusion dynamics under different individual densities. PeerJ, 8, e8974. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8974
Landgraf, T., Moenck, H. J., Gebhardt, G. H. W., Weimar, N., Hocke, M., Maxeiner, M., Musiolek, L., Krause, J., & Bierbach, D. (2020). Socially competent robots: adaptation improves leadership performance in groups of live fish. arXiv:2009.06633 [cs]. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2009.06633
Musiolek, L., Hafner, V. V., Krause, J., Landgraf, T., & Bierbach, D. (2020). Robofish as Social Partner for Live Guppies. Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, 270–274. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64313-3_26

Scripps News - 21 May 2023 - In Real Life: Voices of Nature

BR 24 - 10 Oct 2022 - Warum Fischschwärme so schnell sind

Deutschlandfunk Nova - 17 November 2021 - Auch Fische haben Persönlichkeit

Deutschlandfunk Kultur - 18 November 2021 - Die Weisheit der Vielen

Terra X plus (ZDF) - 9 May 2021 - Schwarmintelligenz. Einer für alle. Alle für einen

Der Tagesspiegel – May 2023 - Denken zwischen Stillstand und Chaos

Natur – October 2022 - Können Fische antizipieren?

SWR – February 2022 - Wenn Fische sprechen könnten

The New York Times – January 2022 - Why These Mexican Fish Do the Wave

Der Standard – January 2022 - Warum mexikanische Fische die La-Ola-Welle machen

Berliner Morgenpost – December 2021 - Fishe in Mexico vertreiben Vögel mit La-Ola Quelle

Scientias – December 2021 - Fish sometimes also seem to do the 'wave'

Scientific American – December 2021 - Fish Do the Wave to Ward Off Predatory Birds

The Scientist – December 2021 - Making Waves and Avoiding Beaks

WDR 5 KiRaKa – December 2021 - Fische wehren mit La-Ola-Wellen Feinde ab

Wissenschaft – December 2021 - Geheimnis fischiger La-Ola-Wellen gelüftet

Spektrum – August 2021 - Auch Fishe haben Persönlichkeit

Berliner Zeitung – August 2021 - Synchronschwimmen

Profil – September 2020 - Schwarmverhaltensforschung

Research

An overview of our scientific work

See our Research Projects