People

David Bierbach

Postdoctoral Researcher

Behavioral Biology
Fish Behavior

HU Berlin

Email:
david.bierbach@hu-berlin.de

Photo: SCIoI

← People Overview

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.

Publications +

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

Scientific Talks +

Thursday Morning Talk - David Bierbach (Science of Intelligence), “Anticipation in social interactions among live and artificial agents”

Thursday Morning Talk - David Bierbach (Science of Intelligence), “Anticipation in fish-robot interactions”

Public Engagement +

For the public - Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2022: Joint “Meet the scientist” talk with all of Berlin’s seven clusters at Humboldt Labor exhibition: Die Soziale Intelligenz von Tieren

For the public - Steinhardt, S., Ott, M., Becattini, V., Bierbach, D., Brock, O., Brück, M., Coelho Mollo, D., Drewlani, T., Kaiser, M., Kretzschmar, L., Ploner, M., Scherer, U., Schutz, C., Steinhardt, S. (Editor). (2024). Science of Intelligence Cluster Report 2024, https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-21205

External Event - 20th conference of the Gesellschaft für Ichthyologie (GfI)

For the Public - Berlin Science Week 2023 – David Bierbach, “From chaos to order: How large collectives benefit from being in a critical state between complete disorder and strong structure”

For the Public - Science of Intelligence Fair 2023

For the Public - Joint “Meet the scientist” talk with all of Berlin’s seven clusters at Humboldt Labor exhibition, “Die Soziale Intelligenz von Tieren”

For the Public - Berlin Science Week Talk, Ralf Kurvers and Pawel Romanczuk: Collective Intelligence or Collective Stupidity? From Fish Schools to Human Groups. Exploring swarm intelligence in fish and humans

For the Public - Berlin Science Week Talk, David Bierbach: Just be yourself! How individual differences shape collective behavior. Using a robotic fish to understand collective behavior