Mert Karakaya
Papers
6
Total Citations
114
H-Index
5
About
Mert Karakaya is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of robotics, animal behavior, and conservation biology. His work focuses on leveraging biologically inspired robots as novel tools to study and manage invasive species, particularly mosquitofish and zebrafish. Karakaya’s major contributions include demonstrating that robotic predators can induce lasting ecological fear responses in invasive mosquitofish—triggering weight loss, altered body shape, and reduced fertility, with implications for population control. His 2019 paper on robotic predation has garnered 49 citations, while a 2021 follow-up (26 citations) confirmed carry-over effects on routine activity and feeding. He also innovated “behavioral teleporting,” where ethograms of live zebrafish are transferred to inanimate robots to study social interactions (15 citations). Notable achievements include linking robotic stimuli to anxiety modulation via Citalopram in zebrafish and demonstrating associative learning in response to aversive robotic cues. Karakaya’s work offers a groundbreaking, non-chemical approach to mitigating biodiversity loss from invasive species, merging robotics with ecological management in ways that inspire both conservationists and roboticists.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Ecology of fear in highly invasive fish revealed by robots26 citations · 2021
- 3
- 4
- 5Zebrafish exhibit associative learning for an aversive robotic stimulus9 citations · 2020
- 6