Most recently we’ve started working on animal behaviour projects with an applied aspect. This includes how environmental change (temperature, turbidity, noise, invasive species (like the Nile tilapia pictured above)) is affecting behavioural interactions, and also the behavioural adaptations animals can employ to mitigate, or even take advantage of, such change. Our paper “Anthropogenic noise pollution from pile-driving disrupts the structure and dynamics of fish shoals” is a good example of this (video below).

Collaborators:

Prof. Martin Genner, University of Bristol

Prof. Andy Radford, University of Bristol

Prof. Andrew Dowsey, University of Bristol

Prof. Eric Morgan, Queen’s University Belfast

Dr. Amy Deacon, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad

As well as collective motion, we’ve also shown how decision making in fish shoals is affected by water turbidity (‘Turbidity increases risk perception but constrains collective behaviour during foraging by fish shoals‘).