Highlights•We investigated social attraction during the collective behaviour of pairs of
fish.•Social attraction was positively correlated with better coordination in the pair.•Individual …

The emergence of leaders and followers is a key factor in facilitating group cohesion in
animals. Individual group members have been shown to respond strongly to each other's …

In many animal groups, certain individuals consistently appear at the forefront of coordinated
movements [1–4]. How such leaders emerge is poorly understood [5, 6]. Here, we show that …

Highlights•Repeated social interactions may generate individual differences in social
behaviour.•Familiar groups did not show greater between-individual variation in …

Studies of coordinated movement have found that, in many animal species, bolder
individuals are more likely to initiate movement and shyer individuals to follow. Here, we …

During collective movement, bolder individuals often emerge as leaders. Here, we
investigate whether this reflects a greater propensity of bold individuals to initiate movement …

Although consistent behavioural differences between individuals (ie personality variation)
are now well established in animals, these differences are not always expressed when …

Collective animal behavior is an emergent phenomenon arising from the local interactions of
the members of animal groups. Considerable progress has been made in characterizing …

Behavioural variation is known to occur between individuals of the same population
competing for resources. Individuals also vary with respect to their boldness or shyness. An …

Collective animal behaviour has attracted much attention recently, but cause-and-effect
within interaction sequences has often been difficult to establish. To tackle this problem, we …