Visual Ecology
Visual information guides many aspects of animal behaviour, in turn affecting their ecology, survival, evolution and conservation. Visual ecology is the highly cross-discipline field that draws these threads together.
Camouflage
Camouflage is the most common defence used by prey and predators alike, highlighting the fundamental importance of vision for predator-prey interactions. These interactions in turn affect whole food webs and ecosystems. My own work has demonstrated how camouflage protects wild animals (e.g. nightjars and other ground nesting birds), how camouflage can be maximised through behaviourally selecting optimal backgrounds (e.g. ground nesting birds, shore crabs and marine isopods), or changing colour to match backgrounds (marine isopods and chameleons). Predator learning is also crucial, and I’ve shown how this can select for evolutionary diversity (e.g. in shore crabs). I’ve also developed new methods for quantifying how well various camouflage strategies work, such as pattern matching or edge disruption.
Signalling
Visual signals are crucial for attracting mates, advertising defences, attracting pollinators, or deceiving others for personal gain. These processes are fundamental to the evolutionary trajectories of vast swathes of species, with sexual signalling (e.g. my work with guppies, drosophila, and birds of paradise) and brood parasitism (e.g. work with various cuckoo systems) driving rapid evolutionary arms races and fuelling explosive radiation events, and warning colours being copied both honestly or dishonestly to put off would-be predators. My work has let me explore many of these wonderfully complex questions.
Some of the amazing signals I’ve seen on my travels:
Motion dazzle
High contrast markings such as stripes and spots can create all sorts of false motion illusions, and considerable effort has sought to show how these could misdirect predator attacks by interfering with their perception of prey direction and speed. Zebra stripes are the common example, yet experimental evidence has been largely equivocal (stripes are rarely better than plain background-matching for evading capture). However, my recent work has demonstrated how butterfly wing patterns can do just this, opening up a whole new avenue of research. The tools I developed to analyse these effects can also tell us about motion illusions in other species, such as the display cuttlefish use to catch unwitting crabs.
Gallery
