AUTHOR=Bierbach David , Mönck Hauke J. , Lukas Juliane , Habedank Marie , Romanczuk Pawel , Landgraf Tim , Krause Jens TITLE=Guppies Prefer to Follow Large (Robot) Leaders Irrespective of Own Size JOURNAL=Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology VOLUME=8 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/bioengineering-and-biotechnology/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2020.00441 DOI=10.3389/fbioe.2020.00441 ISSN=2296-4185 ABSTRACT=
Body size is often assumed to determine how successfully an individual can lead others with larger individuals being better leaders than smaller ones. But even if larger individuals are more readily followed, body size often correlates with specific behavioral patterns and it is thus unclear whether larger individuals are more often followed than smaller ones because of their size or because they behave in a certain way. To control for behavioral differences among differentially-sized leaders, we used biomimetic robotic fish (Robofish) of different sizes. Live guppies (