Professor Innes Cuthill MA(Cantab), DPhil(Oxon)

Research interests

Whilst my core research is in behavioural ecology, my research interests span physiology to population ecology. This is inevitable, as behaviour evolves in response to selection pressures from both interactions with other individuals ('ecology') and the nature of the mechanisms producing the behaviour ('physiology', 'psychology'). Many of the most exciting avenues of research on behaviour lie at the interface between 'classical' behavioural ecology and other disciplines: for example, integrating functional and mechanistic explanations of behaviour, or integrating individual decisions with population processes. Specific research interests include:

Sturnus vulgaris
© I.C. Cuthill

• Animal coloration, particularly defensive coloration such as camouflage
• Colour vision in birds, particularly the function of ultraviolet sensitivity
• Computational methods for identifying animals
• The influence of the light environment on avian welfare
• Fat storage and body mass regulation strategies in birds
• Sexual selection and mate choice in birds and fish
• Protective coloration in relation to visual ecology
• Energetic state, signalling, daily routines and dynamic games
• Parental care and the evolution of mating systems in birds
• Learning, risk-taking behaviour and foraging
• Biostatistics

Regarding the latter, I am not a biostatistician, but am very keen on promoting the proper use of statistics in my field, culminating in a recent paper with Shinichi Nakagawa (University of Sheffield). My main research interest at the moment is animal camouflage, jointly with Tom Troscianko (Experimental Psychology) and Neill Campbell (Computer Sciences). BBSRC have funded the work for several years, the current grant being the Computational Neuroscience of Animal Camouflage. Most of the last 14 years research on bird visual ecology has been in collaboration with Julian Partidge, Andy Bennett, and several other key members of the Ecology of Vision lab. The computer-based individual recognition work is a new collaborative venture, with Peter Barham from Physics, Neill Campbell and Tilo Burkhardt from Computer Sciences, and our jointly supervised PhD student, Richard Sherley. The welfare work has been with Arthur Goldsmith, Andy Bennett and Kate Buchanan. Most of the various projects related to body mass regulation, energetic state and daily routines have been in collaboration with Alasdair Houston, John McNamara and other members of the University Research Centre in Behavioural Biology (notably Rob Thomas, now Cardiff University, and Sean Rands, now at the Vet School, Langford, Bristol). All the recent research on parental care and mating systems has been done with John, Alasdair and Tamas Szekely (now University of Bath). Check out the University Research Centre in Behavioural Biology, Ecology of Vision and Bristol Vision pages, where you will find info on the research of my colleagues and Ph.D. students.

Miscellany