Comprehending and modelling the workings of the animal brain. Truly understanding how the brain operates is a grand challenge of 21st century neuroscience. Progress toward this goal can be made through studying small-brained animals, like the honey bee. This project aims to use microscopy and pharmacology to analyse the neural mechanisms by which bees learn and classify complex things. This will enable the construction of a computational model of decision making in the bee brain. Analysing this ....Comprehending and modelling the workings of the animal brain. Truly understanding how the brain operates is a grand challenge of 21st century neuroscience. Progress toward this goal can be made through studying small-brained animals, like the honey bee. This project aims to use microscopy and pharmacology to analyse the neural mechanisms by which bees learn and classify complex things. This will enable the construction of a computational model of decision making in the bee brain. Analysing this model will test what is understood about the operation of the animal brain, and what simulates it. This project aims to reveal how neural circuits make complex decisions; establish key principles and foundational studies for comprehending larger more complex brains, and yield new approaches to machine learning.Read moreRead less
Social and environmental selection on female ornaments and armaments. Darwin's theory of sexual selection is remarkably successful in explaining how elaborate signals evolved in male animals, but it is unclear whether similar processes drive the evolution of female signals. This project aims to conduct empirical and comparative tests of hypotheses for female trait elaboration, capitalising on inter- and intra-specific variation in female signal form, social organisation and signalling environmen ....Social and environmental selection on female ornaments and armaments. Darwin's theory of sexual selection is remarkably successful in explaining how elaborate signals evolved in male animals, but it is unclear whether similar processes drive the evolution of female signals. This project aims to conduct empirical and comparative tests of hypotheses for female trait elaboration, capitalising on inter- and intra-specific variation in female signal form, social organisation and signalling environments. The project could generate new insight into the processes that promote and constrain phenotypic diversity in nature.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120100019
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Miniaturisation: sensory limitations and navigational competence. Body size in most animals correlates with behavioural competence, brain capacity and sensory receptors. But since the navigational challenges faced by animals both big and small are similar, this project aims to identify the sensory and behavioural costs of miniaturisation and the strategies animals have evolved to cope with it.
Impacts of locust control pesticides on arid-zone fauna. Impacts of locust control pesticides on arid-zone fauna. This project aims to understand how different animals encounter pesticide in the landscape through quantifying residue deposition in arid grasslands and investigating how pesticides used to control locust plagues affect fauna. This project will investigate fenitrothion and fipronil, the main pesticides used in Australia for locust control. It will develop a deposition model for aeria ....Impacts of locust control pesticides on arid-zone fauna. Impacts of locust control pesticides on arid-zone fauna. This project aims to understand how different animals encounter pesticide in the landscape through quantifying residue deposition in arid grasslands and investigating how pesticides used to control locust plagues affect fauna. This project will investigate fenitrothion and fipronil, the main pesticides used in Australia for locust control. It will develop a deposition model for aerial pesticide spraying, determine the short-term effect of sprayed pesticides on the behaviour and condition of free-ranging target fauna that use the environment differently, and quantify the relative importance of dietary and non-dietary exposure routes to gauge the importance of animal behaviour on pesticide exposure. Anticipated outcomes are improved baseline assessments for locusticides.Read moreRead less
Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition. Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of ....Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition. Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of visual navigational cues, as well as the opportunity to study the brains of the tethered ants as they solve the real-world challenge of finding home. This may reveal how simple brains efficiently solve navigational tasks, which may inform both cognitive biology and bio-inspired computation.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE150101774
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$372,000.00
Summary
Early environmental effects on phenotypic development and evolution. Early developmental environments can profoundly influence the survival and reproductive success of organisms, including humans. The project aims to use an exceptional model lizard system to test a new theory about how personality and learning are influenced through the manipulation of offspring environment and how this affects lifetime fitness. Understanding these effects is important for predicting the responses to selection i ....Early environmental effects on phenotypic development and evolution. Early developmental environments can profoundly influence the survival and reproductive success of organisms, including humans. The project aims to use an exceptional model lizard system to test a new theory about how personality and learning are influenced through the manipulation of offspring environment and how this affects lifetime fitness. Understanding these effects is important for predicting the responses to selection imposed by changing environments, the success of re-introduction programs for threatened species, and for understanding the long-term viability of populations. This project aims to merge theoretical developments in life history theory and evolutionary biology and contribute important empirical advances to a new research field.Read moreRead less
Transgenerational Consequences of Different Environmental Experiences. The project aims to deliver an integrative overview of behavioural, evolutionary and environmental epigenetics. In particular, by studying why stress-related experiences of organisms (e.g. exposure to toxins) can be passed onto the future generations regardless of its seemingly fitness-reducing impacts. It also aims to test if the seemingly beneficial effect of non-stress related experiences (e.g. environmental enrichment) ca ....Transgenerational Consequences of Different Environmental Experiences. The project aims to deliver an integrative overview of behavioural, evolutionary and environmental epigenetics. In particular, by studying why stress-related experiences of organisms (e.g. exposure to toxins) can be passed onto the future generations regardless of its seemingly fitness-reducing impacts. It also aims to test if the seemingly beneficial effect of non-stress related experiences (e.g. environmental enrichment) can be inherited transgenerationally. This project involves both research synthesis (e.g. meta-analysis) and experiments on zebrafish employing cutting-edge statistical, computational and molecular methods along with behavioural assays. Also, the outcomes of the synthesis are expected to guide future work in the field. Read moreRead less
Information processing at its limits: from the dimmest habitats to the smallest sizes. Ensuring optimal information processing at the limits of size and ambient light is a challenge for technical systems, but has been elegantly solved by animals. The challenge of navigation is similar for animals of all sizes and in both day and night. This project aims to conduct a comparative analysis to identify the consequence of size and light on the information processing capacities for visual navigation. ....Information processing at its limits: from the dimmest habitats to the smallest sizes. Ensuring optimal information processing at the limits of size and ambient light is a challenge for technical systems, but has been elegantly solved by animals. The challenge of navigation is similar for animals of all sizes and in both day and night. This project aims to conduct a comparative analysis to identify the consequence of size and light on the information processing capacities for visual navigation. Outcomes of this project will reveal the behavioural and physiological adaptations needed and the costs associated with navigating in the dimmest of habitats and at the smallest of sizes. Identifying such optimal biological solutions for robust navigation will be relevant for image processing, computer vision and robotics.Read moreRead less
Movement ecology of flying-foxes. This project aims to understand flying-fox movement ecology from individual navigation through to population redistribution. Understanding movement across spatiotemporal scales is a goal of movement research. Grey-headed flying-foxes are mobile, and advances in tracking technology make them ideal for studying movement across scales. This project will determine how flying foxes navigate, and integrate this with drivers of their movement to understand their moveme ....Movement ecology of flying-foxes. This project aims to understand flying-fox movement ecology from individual navigation through to population redistribution. Understanding movement across spatiotemporal scales is a goal of movement research. Grey-headed flying-foxes are mobile, and advances in tracking technology make them ideal for studying movement across scales. This project will determine how flying foxes navigate, and integrate this with drivers of their movement to understand their movement ecology by using methods that integrate experimental manipulation with telemetry, Doppler radar and analytical techniques. This is expected to develop much-needed management strategies that incorporate an understanding of movement.Read moreRead less
Acquiring and Using Views for Homing. The aim of the project is to investigate how insects acquire and use scene memories for homing, a crucially important task for most animals. In bees and wasps, these memories are acquired during learning flights when leaving the nest. This fast, active learning process underpins much of the insects' navigational competence, but it remains unknown how it is controlled and how in detail memories guide returns to the nest. It is intended to use the latest camer ....Acquiring and Using Views for Homing. The aim of the project is to investigate how insects acquire and use scene memories for homing, a crucially important task for most animals. In bees and wasps, these memories are acquired during learning flights when leaving the nest. This fast, active learning process underpins much of the insects' navigational competence, but it remains unknown how it is controlled and how in detail memories guide returns to the nest. It is intended to use the latest camera-based reconstruction tools for the first time: to quantify the navigational information content of habitats including the visual information available to learning and homing insects, and to dynamically modify the insects’ natural visual environment in order to critically test hypotheses about acquisition and use of views for homing.Read moreRead less