Tag: Research

In the business of dwarf mongooses

Posted on by dan.watts

Leopards, hard-boiled eggs, “yip yip yip”-ping, and faeces collecting – just a typical day in the life of dwarf mongoose field researcher Amy Morris-Drake. 

Having spent a holiday in South Africa before starting her undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Bristol, Amy Morris-Drake fell in love with the noise and colours of the African bush. At the end of 2013, having graduated, she saw an advert seeking a Research Assistant that required the applicant to go to South Africa and study the behaviour of an adorable tiny mammal entirely unknown to Amy at the time, the dwarf mongoose.  

The dwarf mongoose is the smallest of the three social mongoose species found in Africa, making termite mounds their home. Collectively known as a business, dwarf mongooses measure 18–30cm from head to tail. But despite their size, dwarf mongooses are hardy creatures who work tirelessly – foraging, grooming and defending one another from rival groups and scores of predators. 

Always fascinated by animal behaviour and determined to return to Africa, Amy landed the Research Assistant job in Professor Andy Radford’s Dwarf Mongoose Research Project. She lived on Sorabi Rock Lodge reserve for 6 months, observing the creatures in their natural habitat. “It was originally going to be 3 months but I loved it and didn’t want to leave”, recalls Amy. The dwarf mongooses made such as impression that on her return to the UK, Amy decided to study them for her Masters and then her PhD (which she completed this year). She took a small break in between the Masters and PhD to try something new – observing elephant behaviour, also in South Africa – but that didn’t quite go to plan. “Instead of trying to focus on elephants, I was always scanning termite mounds so my eyes were just tuned in to these mongooses and their lives”. 

At Sorabi, the researchers (normally 4 per year) all share a house, eating and sleeping in close quarters before heading out solo to observe the 8 habituated mongoose groups. Because none of the ‘Big Five’ live on this reserve, students can roam on foot. “There may be the occasional leopard that passes through” Amy mentions casually, “but they’re nocturnal so we’re alright”. In her first few days on the reserve back in 2013, Amy recalls being baffled by fellow researchers at the stove every night boiling eggs, but quickly learned the reason. Habituated mongooses adore eggs, and the promise of a mouthful is enough to get the tiny mammals onto some scales for the students to monitor their weight to observe foraging success and pregnancies. And so, for Amy, every day at the researcher house involved waking up, eating breakfast and mashing last-night’s eggs. 

Dwarf mongooses rise with the sun at around 8 am, or 9 am if it’s a cold day. Amy would venture out to the burrow she tracked her mongoose family to the night before, kitted up with equipment, scales, a GPS, maps and, of course, eggs. She would sit by the mound with a flask of coffee and wait for the mongooses to emerge from their sleeping quarters. After the family finished up with their cuddles and grooming, Amy weighed them, treating them with a tiny piece of egg as a reward for jumping onto the scales. Repeated morning, midday and in the evening, handing over the egg with a “yip yip yip” to vocalise her thanks in mongoose for their cooperation, Amy could build a picture of how different situations affects the weight of individuals. 

The focus of Amy’s PhD was social conflict, including territorial interactions with outsider groups. To simulate the current or recent presence of rival groups, Amy used playback of calls and introduced faeces from rival families to the group and then studied their response. This required collecting hundreds of faecal samples for different experiments. She describes wading through the bushes in gaiters to protect from ticks and thorns, and waiting for the mongooses to do their business, all the while enduring their judgmental stares. In one experiment, Amy stored “outsider” samples and distributed these on cue to the group being studied at the same time every day for a week; in control weeks, she presented herbivore faeces in the same fashion. In total, she managed to complete both trials weeks to 7 of the habituated groups; a feat of perseverance, skill and patience.  

“When working with wild animals, things always go wrong”, she says. Sometimes the group would be preoccupied with sporadic territory-marking or birds of prey flying overhead, instead of reacting to the out-group scents and sounds. Due to certain reactions or conditions not going her way, Amy ultimately had to scrap nearly a month’s worth of data from that particular field season. It’s physically demanding work, with long hours spent alone in 35C heat with insects, invertebrates, and reptiles to contend with. Upon collecting the last few faeces samples, Amy remembers “falling on [her] knees and crying” with relief. But it was worth it: she found that, by the end of the week of rival-group faecal presentations, the test subjects were foraging closer together, grooming and scent-marking more, and putting on less weight, providing the first experimental evidence of cumulative effects of intergroup conflict. 

According to Amy, to be a good experimental biologist you need an incredible amount of patience. In the early stages of her research, Amy would call up the project’s Principal Investigator, Andy Radford, frustrated that she wouldn’t be able to obtain enough behavioural data to complete her Masters. But with practice, she was able to train her eye to spot the mongoose’s subtle movements, expressions, and vocal responses to outgroup threats, and finished her PhD earlier this year. “Fieldwork isn’t for everyone”, Amy notes, “but it’s amazing seeing cool behaviours that you’ve learned about in lectures happen half a metre away from you”. The dwarf mongooses go about their daily lives as if you’re not even there, and Amy had a first-hand view into this cooperatively breeding society. 

Amy visited the reserve every year for 7 years, spending 5 or 6 months out there at a time. She likes to think that the dwarf mongoose families remember her despite the months apart. The mongooses have blatant favourites in the researchers, giving out high-pitched calls to the ones they are most excited to see. Now that Amy has completed her PhD, she continues to work on the theme of outgroup conflict as a postdoc, with 10 years’ worth of mongoose data to sift through to uncover lasting behavioural and fitness impacts. As to the Dwarf Mongoose Research Project, Amy is hopeful that funding will be found so that many other researchers can follow her to Sorabi. One of her most rewarding moments has been to witness the experiences of her fellow scientists on the project as they fall in love with the vibrant beauty of South Africa and the diversity of its animals and landscapes. And the deepest love of all is for the mongooses. Contributors to the project have all stayed in touch, as members of a truly long-term community dedicated to the greater understanding and prosperity of these tiny but fearless creatures. 

Written by: Agatha Hewitt 

Rosie Ford tells her experience as winner of Bristol’s 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) competition

Posted on by jessica.camps

Rosie recently won the University of Bristol’s 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) competition for her talk on ‘Fungal secondary metabolites: exploring a kingdom of possibilities.  Rosie tells us about her experience and some top tips about presenting your research in a virtual world.

3MT® (or Three Minute Thesis) is a competition for doctoral students, originating from the University of Queensland, which stipulates that competitors must present their research in just 3 minutes – any longer and they are immediately disqualified. Normally, the competition is held in person, in front of an audience, but due to COVID-19, in the past two years, the competitions have been moved online, presenting a new challenge – how do you engage an audience who can walk away from their screen at any time?

I decided to take part in Bristol Doctoral College’s 2021 3MT competition for several reasons. The first, to improve my presenting skills, especially in a virtual world I wanted to teach myself how to adapt to this. Secondly, I hadn’t set foot in the lab since December 2020, and I was just about to head back to research after a PIPS placement when I submitted my 3MT application – I needed to refamiliarize myself with my research and what made it so exciting (how better to do this than explaining your project and arguing why it is important in a concise way). Lastly, I’d heard great things from colleagues who had taken part in the Bristol Doctoral College 3MT in the past so why not give it a go myself?

The whole experience was hugely rewarding, and the support is given by the Bristol Doctoral College and the other candidates was key in my success. There were never any feelings of intense competition but rather mutual support and a desire to communicate research in an accessible manner. Potentially winning the competition was simply a bonus to all the skills you picked up along the way. So here are the key things I learnt:

1. Eye contact is crucial – we know that this is true for in-person presentations, you can’t stare at the floor the whole time, but how do you convey this when you’re using a computer or laptop? Look straight into the camera. The temptation is always to look at your audience to see how they are responding to you, as you would normally, but if you are looking at your screen you don’t seem as prepared. Perhaps the easiest way to teach yourself to make eye contact with a virtual audience is to record yourself and watch it back. This also helps you to see what your body language is like and if it adds to or distracts from your talk. Not only this but looking at the camera does actually help with nerves since you can ignore anything else going on in that video call and just focus on presenting.

2. Check your presentation is appropriate for your audience by practising it in front of people in your target group. This could be friends, family, or colleagues, and they don’t have to listen to the whole thing, even just 1 slide or the first 30 seconds would be useful. If you’ve lost them already, you need to rethink things. Even though I was lucky enough to be the winner of this year’s competition, I’m definitely guilty of this too. In my first version of my 3MT talk, the first word I said was “peptide”. Admittedly this was key to my presentation but perhaps not the most exciting way to start off, especially if your audience doesn’t know what a peptide is – something my fellow 3MT competitors pointed out to me. On that note, if you have to include something technical or complex in a presentation to a lay audience, give yourself plenty of time to explain it and metaphors can really help with this – but make sure you use something most people will know (i.e., you shouldn’t need to explain your metaphor too).

I’m looking forward to going onto the next stages of the competition, seeing what other doctoral students across the UK are up to, and picking up some useful skills as I go along.

Rosie Ford, SWBio DTP student

 

Remote data collection in the mountains of Nepal

Posted on by jessica.camps

When the arrival of Covid-19 took overseas fieldwork firmly off the menu, things looked rather bleak for the Micro-Poll project. Our aim was to understand the links between pollinators, climate change and human nutrition in rural Nepal, but with an interdisciplinary team of nutritionists, pollination ecologists and climate change modellers scattered across six different countries and a whole lot of complex fieldwork to be run in Nepal, this looked like a challenge too far. In mid-April however, in the remote hills of western Nepal, a remarkable thing occurred. In the midst of a global pandemic, ten enthusiastic young field assistants from ten local villages were trained in the science of pollination ecology and began a year of data collection – all without a single overseas project partner setting foot in the country.

A small subsistence farm in the dry hills above Jumla – our field site in western Nepal

Where international travel has failed, technology and teamwork have excelled. A data collection app has been developed and translated into Nepali, guiding field assistants through the survey process and helping to identify plants and pollinators. Homemade training videos have been produced in the gardens of New Zealand and projected onto the walls of Nepali villages. Countless Zoom calls have taken place, with nets being waved in front of the camera and the basics of pollination ecology explained to our endlessly adaptable project manager in Nepal. In one particularly memorable moment (halfway through dinner), I was video called from the rocky hills of our field site, with the snowy Himalayas in the background, to watch the field assistants putting their newly-learnt skills into action.

As I sit at my desk, watching the data appear online, freshly uploaded from a transient patch of internet at the top of some remote hill in Nepal, I can’t help but wish this wasn’t all necessary – that I could be out there with them. But perhaps we should start to embrace this remote fieldwork as the new normal, as it does have some major advantages. So far, in the year or so of this project’s life, we have saved around 50 tons of carbon, just from staying put in our own countries. This has also had another important effect – in the absence of overseas staff, the team in Nepal have had to take full ownership of this project, learning, managing and implementing everything for themselves. This embeds the work in Nepal in a much more permanent way, ensuring the skills, capacity and knowledge it has built live on long after the end of the project.

Background to the Micro-Poll Project:  Micro-Poll is a 3-year transdisciplinary project led by Professor Jane Memmott, with partners from the University of Harvard, the University of Helsinki and UCL. The project is funded by the Belmont Forum (a consortium of international funders including NERC, NSF and the Finnish Academy) and the Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation.  Nepal is on the front line of climate change, placing both its people and its pollinators at risk. Pollinator declines are predicted to impact human health as key micronutrients in insect pollinated crops such as vitamin A and folate are lost from the diet. With no viable alternatives to home-grown foods and limited access to vitamin supplements, rural Nepali communities cannot afford to lose their pollinators. Our project aims to predict the impacts of climate change on pollinator communities and the resulting effects on human nutrition. We will use this information to devise mitigation strategies for safeguarding both pollinators and human health in Nepal.

Written by: Tom Timberlake, lead post-doc on the Micro-Poll project

One of the new field assistants surveying early spring pollinators on the apple blossom
The new data collection app being put into action during the training course
Perfecting the art of catching insect pollinators in the training course
Deepak, the Nepali team leader teaching data collectors how to establish survey plots
Freshly trained field assistants with the Nepali project staff after a week of intense training in Jumla

A pigment of your imagination? Unravelling conspicuous colouration in mammals

Posted on by jessica.camps

Typically, you’d expect to see a lot of red and green at Christmas, but on Tuesday 3rd December, black and white took centre stage for the Biological Sciences 2019 Christmas Lecture. Professor Tim Caro spoke to provide the answers to questions such as why zebras are striped and why giant pandas are black and white.

Pandas were the opening act, and Professor Caro walked us through the possible hypotheses behind their striking, and seemingly eye catching, colouration. Were the black and white patches a form of aposematism, like it is thought to be the case with skunks?

Comparative analyses suggested this was not the case. Contrary to human assumption, Tim showed that the contrasting patches are adapted for crypsis in both shade and snow, and that markings on the head are used in communication.

Tim also stressed the importance of evolutionary time in understanding the believability of this theory. While nowadays they do not have any natural predators, thousands of years ago pandas cohabited with tigers, bears and wild dogs. Camouflage would thus likely have been highly beneficial in the panda’s snowy mountain habitat.

Explaining the adaptive significance of zebra stripes was next. Logically and methodically dissecting all well-known theories that attempted to solve the riddle of this famous equid’s stripes, he left the audience wondering what was left.

The first theory to fall was camouflage. Research shows that the stripes of zebras do not, as previously thought, make them harder to spot at moonlight. Stripes as an anti-predator defence is therefore unlikely. Cooling was also shown to be an improbable answer, as it has been proven that the temperature of zebras compared to other non-striped equids is higher in the summer months.

Perhaps the stripes facilitate social stimulation? Probably not. Grooming rate in zebras is low compared to other equids, so it looks unlikely neck stripes encourage social bonding this way. Furthermore, in many equid species individuals can accurately recognise each other without striped hair. The last to receive a grilling was the confusion effect hypothesis as an anti-predator defence mechanism. It turns out that in assessing the number of individuals in a herd, difficulty doing so depends only on the size of the herd, and not if members are striped or not.

Like a magician revealing his final trick, Tim explained the missing piece of the puzzle was ectoparasite avoidance. His team discovered a striking correlation between the geography of striped equids and the distribution of tabanids (biting flies).

Originally proposed in 1940, this theory wasn’t investigated until Tim and his team used a multi factorial analysis to track the distribution of zebras and other equids to see if there was a pattern. They found there was a strong association between the presence of striped equids and the presence of tabanids. Further experiments dressing up horses in striped coats (yes, you read that correctly) showed that flies struggled more, in landing on and biting, those with striped coats.

Tim’s parting message was one that focused on conservation. He stressed that children should not be told fairy tales to explain how animals came to be and why they look the way they do. Rather, we should explain to them the science behind it, so that the public can understand and be convinced to do something about the biodiversity crisis.

Following the talk, I caught up with Tim over a class of mulled wine to find out a bit more about him, and why he chooses to study such charismatic and recognisable animals.

So, Tim, why did you decide to study biology?

My mother gave me the Observer’s Book of Birds when I was three years old and ever since then I was hooked.

Was there a particular teacher or tutor that inspired you?

There is one that definitely stands out. He was called Mr Harlen and I think he taught Biology. I remember one day he drew a diagram of an alimentary canal in such a simple, logical way, and I thought, ‘this is makes so much sense’.

Why have you chosen such recognisable and charismatic animals to study, such as cheetahs, zebras and pandas?

I like that there are thorny issues surrounding these species, their behaviour and the way they look, which everyone has some interest in understanding.

Which animal has been your favourite to work with and why?

It would have to be cheetahs. For four years I was alone in the Serengeti studying their mating systems and I learned a lot.

Is there anything you wished you had done differently in the field?

I would say that dressing up in a zebra-striped onesie and walking through the territory of the local lion pride wasn’t my greatest idea.

Do you have any advice for third years, or anyone considering postgraduate study?

Absolutely. Find the thing you are really interested in and research it. Really get into a system or get to know a species or group really well, so that you become the ‘go to’ person about that area. I wish I had done that, and I think it can really help inspire and direct your study.

Written by Esme Hedley (3rd Year Biology BSc)

Esme Hedley is a third-year year biology student with a passion for behavioural ecology, science communication and scientific illustration.



Summer in the Fly Lab

Posted on by jessica.camps

Finding summer internships and career experience to build up a CV is a common pressure on university students, and for those who use summer work to help financially support themselves, these often voluntary or unpaid opportunities can become especially limited. I found myself in this challenging position in my third year when I was deciding on a career path without any experience. I was considering research or science communication but felt overwhelmed with the possibility that it was too late since I hadn’t done a summer placement.

After months of searching for internships, I had almost given up hope until I received an email from the University of Bristol Careers Service about the University of Oxford’s pilot UNIQ+ Summer School. Students who may find pursuing a postgraduate degree a challenge, for example, for financial or socio-economic reasons, could partake in a six-week postgraduate-style research project, receiving free accommodation in an Oxford college, and a generous stipend to cover any missed summer income. It was the perfect solution to my dilemma and being part of a cohort appealed much more than being alone!

The Application Process

This year, UNIQ+ was open to medical, biological, mathematical and physical sciences students but will hopefully expand to other subjects in future years. While applying, you specify your research interests to help match you to the right supervisor and project; mine were behavioural ecology and sociogenomics but I included a few others if they weren’t available. I sent my CV and an official academic transcript, and wrote a personal statement which elaborated on my circumstances, research interests and experience, and what a place on UNIQ+ would mean to me. A challenging part of the application was ensuring two referees sent in their reference letters by the deadline; I only had ten days in the latter half of the Easter holidays to do this, hence reaching the relevant academics was difficult! Thankfully, my referees were wonderful and wrote my letters just in time. I strongly recommend starting the process much earlier than I did and prioritise contacting your references as it is your responsibility that they are submitted!

I was offered a place having just finished my first of six exams in May; news which couldn’t have come at a better time as I had declined summer work holding out hope! I didn’t know the details of my project until early June but fortunately, my project was very well suited to my interests, studying the nutritional choices of five species of Drosophila under the supervision of Dr Jen Perry, an evolutionary ecologist in the Department of Zoology. I had never worked with fruit flies before, so this was a good opportunity to learn new lab techniques and challenge myself.

Lab Experience

I was shown around the Fly Lab on my first afternoon in Oxford, realising how different research labs are to the teaching labs that I was used to! The small size made it feel very immersive, and it meant I met everyone and became familiar with everything so quickly. I attended lab meetings where I set my own weekly goals and spoke about my project’s progress, which made me feel so welcome and often forgetting that I was a visiting student at all. I was given a lot of independence which suited me despite the steep learning curve it brought – one evening I left the lab at 10:30 pm because I severely underestimated how long transferring individual flies to vials would take!

My experiment expanded upon recent studies which suggest that D. melanogaster females consume more protein than males and that this contributes to egg production. This was supported by studies showing that increased protein consumption can decrease longevity, implying that the consumption must increase lifetime fitness for this strategy to persist. To the best of our knowledge, this hadn’t been tested in other species of Drosophila, which provided the premise for my project. I used D. melanogaster, D. birchii, D. pseudoananassae, D. pandora, and D. sulfurigaster to study the difference in protein and carbohydrate consumption in mated and unmated (virgin) males and females. I reared flies of each species and allocated them treatment groups once they were sexually mature (around five days after eclosion). Then, I performed large-scale mating experiments with roughly 600 females (see picture of the mating rack below) and separated them into their experimental agar vials for the nutrition experiment. Nutritional choice and consumption were measured using the difference in fill-level of two small capillary tubes (called ringcaps) over 24 hours; one filled with protein solution and the other with a carbohydrate solution. I repeated this process for three days, eventually converting the fill-level difference to volume consumed for statistical analysis.

An example of just one rack for the mating experiment. Recorded on the tubes are the species, the time the male was introduced, the time they began mating and the time they finished mating. This helped discern any mating differences between species. I was watching all of these flies at once!
Vials with ringcaps. The red-topped tubes contain protein solution and the green-topped tubes contain carbohydrate solution.

After my initial analysis, my most notable result was a significant difference in protein consumption between mated females of different species. While protein consumption significantly increased following mating in all species, there was significant variation between them in the proportion of this increase. Considering that there are over 1500 species of Drosophila, results from lab generations of D. melanogaster therefore might be less applicable to other species than originally thought! To further investigate the relationship between nutrition and mating status, sex and species I completed further analyses which I presented to the cohort on my final day.

I truly enjoyed my time as part of the Fly Lab; I developed a repertoire of animal husbandry skills, from anaesthetising and sexing my project species (they’re surprisingly different!), to making their food and observing their mating behaviour. My biggest mistake was not keeping an organised lab book, particularly when it came to experimental design and numbers, something I know for my master’s project! After these six weeks, I feel more prepared not only for my fourth year but potential postgraduate studies. Although this time was a twinkle in the eye of a PhD, I am seriously considering it for my future and I look forward to exploring my options.

Social Experience

Alongside working hard in the labs, there was also a social programme to integrate the 39 of us with different projects (this included 6 students on a similar programme for the social sciences organised by Nuffield College). The core events were weekly semi-formal dinners hosted by one of the Oxford colleges. They offered a chance to catch up with other participants, meet the UNIQ+ academics and admin team, and speak to current PhD students (known as DPhil students at Oxford). If you are considering postgraduate study particularly at Oxford, these dinners were instrumental in creating a true college experience and meant you could ask college-specific questions at each. Set around these dinners were talks from academics and current DPhil students about their research areas, college tours, drinks receptions and even punting! Informal events were also organised by us, such as a curry night and attending a Shakespeare play at Oxford Castle.

For me, one of the most influential days was the Graduate Study Information Session. We heard informative talks from admissions and finance staff about the postgraduate interview process, applying for scholarship funding, and other extremely valuable tips to help us for the application process. These sessions, alongside our lab experience, really made postgraduate study feel so much more accessible than before UNIQ+ and gave me the confidence boost I needed to decide whether postgraduate study was for me.

Of course, one of the best parts of UNIQ+ was the friends I made. Leaving your established friendship group to go and live in a new city was so challenging but making friends from other universities in similar situations to yourself was definitely a highlight. I’m so grateful to have met such driven and passionate friends who genuinely inspired me so much in such a short time.

Punting was clearly not as easy as it seems…

Final Thoughts

Although it wasn’t without its hiccups, the pilot year of UNIQ+ was incredible and I am confident that our feedback will help make next year’s programme even better. The intended increase in intake hopefully means more participants in each college to create a more representative view of college life, where I felt there could be the most improvement. This, however, didn’t dictate my overall experience, and I left the programme with so much more clarity about my future direction, and for that I couldn’t be more thankful.

If you are passionate about research and meet the requirements for the UNIQ+ application (which can be checked here), then I strongly urge you to apply, even if you aren’t considering Oxford! It was a unique insight into postgraduate life and a really valuable way to spend the summer; it pushes you out of your comfort zone and into a world-renowned university that is often seen as inaccessible. Opportunities like these are still scarce but I am hopeful that this is changing. I believe that the University of Oxford’s UNIQ+ Access Summer School is pioneering a new era of research internship opportunities across universities so that all students can fulfil their passions.

Finally, I would like to thank all members of the UNIQ+ admin team and organisers for such a memorable experience, as well as the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology and in particular everyone in the Fly Lab for being so welcoming. Of course, a special thank you goes to Dr Perry – I couldn’t have asked for a lovelier supervisor who helped make my summer in Oxford so brilliant.

Written by Ellie Jarvis Zoology (MSci)

UNIQ+ Summer School at the University of Oxford (1st July – 9th August 2019)


The colourful world of crab camouflage

Posted on by jessica.camps

How changes in colouration and behaviour enable marine arthropods to survive in a diverse environment

Who is the hero of Professor Martin Stevens? As he told the staff and students of the university this Monday, it is the famous naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who inspired Professor Stevens to pursue research into camouflage and colour in nature.

“Among the numerous applications of the Darwinian theory… none have been more successful, or more interesting, than those which deal with the colours of animals and plants” (Wallace 1889).

This Monday, the School of Biological Sciences was visited by Professor Stevens, who spoke about the mechanics of camouflage and its adaptive value in nature through studies of within-species diversity and habitat matching inshore crabs and chameleon prawns.

Camouflage seems like an easy concept to grasp.

We have all heard of the rapid colour change in chameleons. However, as Professor Stevens explained, it isn’t quite that simple. Firstly, the majority of colour change in animals is continuous and gradual, unlike that of the famous chameleons and cuttlefish. Additionally, this style of camouflage (background matching) is just one of many types that animals employ to disguise themselves in their environments.

Professor Stevens elaborated on this in his case study of the common shore crab Carcinus maenas. This highly adaptable organism shows a huge variation in colours and patterns, which seems in part associated with background matching to the environment individuals are in. Both in mudflats and in rocky shores, the two differently coloured habitats we find these crabs in, the crab’s colour pattern is related to their habitat. Professor Stevens also revealed that crabs showed behavioural preferences to match to certain backgrounds as well.

Interestingly, these crabs also change appearance with age, gradually become duller and tending to lose their markings and converging on a universal dull green colour.

They seem to all adopt this generalist camouflage because while they get less mobile as they age, it might not be adaptive to keep matching the background if constantly moving; this strategy was found to be surprisingly effective, through analysis of a citizen science game at the Natural History Museum! Additionally, it was interesting to hear how individual diversity in these crabs is due to different camouflage strategies, such as disruptive colouration, and how complex markings can defeat predator search images and drive apostatic selection (i.e. rare appearances being more successful in avoiding predation).

Chameleon prawns (Hyppolyte varians) have even weirder and wonderful camouflage than the crabs, some being bright green, red, or transparent.

These creatures can change colour to match seasonal changes in substrate, although again this change takes 14-21 days; it is not quick like the chameleons! Therefore, some behavioural choices are needed to allow them to effectively camouflage in the short term. They seem to prefer seaweeds that match their body colour, and this is an effective strategy as survival rate has been shown to be higher on matched background. Parallels exist with a more exotic species in Brazil; nicknamed ‘carnival prawns’, the males can also be transparent, since they are less likely to sit on algae and are more mobile while in search of females.

Finally, Professor Stevens discussed questions for possible future study: Why do they change in colour at night? Why does light intensity affect the strength of camouflage? And, most intriguingly, can these prawns see in colour vision? To finish, the influence of anthropogenic change on these organisms was discussed in the context of how increasing water temperature and ship noise pollution might affect their camouflage abilities.

Written by Esme Hedley, Biology (BSc) and Miren Porres, Zoology (BSc)


Smart scientist studies smart butterflies

Posted on by jessica.camps

During his seminar on Monday, Dr Stephen Montgomery explained how his multi-disciplinary team tackles questions of cognitive adaptation, neuroecology and evolution in butterflies. Coming to us from the University of Cambridge, Dr Montgomery’s presentation was all the more interesting as he will be joining us in the School of Biological Sciences in September.

How does cognition relate to evolution?

This may seem like a daunting question, but Dr Montgomery has made it his career. Whilst initially working on primate brain evolution as part of his PhD, Dr Montgomery now leads a team of scientists studying ecological neurobiology in two clades of Neotropical butterflies, Ithomiini and Heliconiini. His research involves many collaborators and a range of experimental methods.

However, what Dr Montgomery described as “the main story” of his research concerns pollen feeding in Heliconius butterflies. The story begins in the 1970s when Larry Gilbert and colleagues pointed out that Heliconius butterflies were the only butterflies that collect and digest the pollen grains of Cucumis anguria. These pollen grains are the butterflies’ ‘elixir of life’, as they provide rare amino acids, which lead to greater longevity and halt senescence. However, whilst these plants are a reliable food source, they are very sparsely distributed. Gilbert thus concluded that Heliconius learned specific “trap-lines” to attain this food source. Later on, John Sivinski suggested that this enhanced ability for learning and memory is associated with an enlarged region of the insect brain, the mushroom bodies.

Dr Montgomery and his colleagues are now investigating the Heliconius mushroom bodies and their relationship to cognition and evolution.

The Montgomery team started with morphometric analyses of the Heliconius mushroom bodies and compared these to closely related Lepidoptera species. Although the data are not entirely collected yet, Dr Montgomery told us that the Heliconius mushroom bodies are “ridiculously bigger” than in other butterflies.

Whilst it is clear that Heliconius have enlarged mushroom bodies, Dr Montgomery wanted to know if this translated into different processing of sensory information. In an impressive feat of computer modelling, Dr Antoine Couto, a member of Dr Montgomery’s team, produced 3D models of Heliconius brains that suggest the presence of a relatively larger projection zone coming from the ventral lobula, which receives visual information. This would be consistent with the hypothesis that Heliconius learn these “trap-lines” with visual cues.

But Dr Montgomery was not content with a suggestion, he wished to confirm this with a large-scale behavioural experiment. Designing this experiment was challenging as Heliconius seem to only learn visual cues on a large spatial scale. Thus, Dr Montgomery and his team sought out ways to conduct comparative behavioural experiments.

This work is still ongoing, but Dr Montgomery already has pilot data coming from his PhD student Fletcher Young in Panama which explores whether enlarged mushroom bodies are associated with differences in learning performance. For example, Young is testing whether Heliconius can reverse an initial colour preference bias through conditioning training. Heliconius and other closely related butterfly species are being put through this training and after a certain amount of time, they can be assessed to test subjects had retained the information. Therefore enabling a test of whether or not enlarged mushroom bodies are associated with variation in learning and memory traits.

As previously mentioned, Dr Montgomery’s investigation of butterfly cognition is impressive by its scope of different approaches. As part of his team, Dr Francesco Cicconardi and Laura Hebberecht-Lopez are also investigating the developmental process of the Heliconius mushroom bodies. They will be undertaking a comparative developmental study of mushroom bodies across several species to identify the “turning point” which characterises Heliconius’ enhanced cognition.

The study will involve monitoring brain anatomy from larva to adult stages and analysing the corresponding transcriptomes.

Finally, Dr Montgomery expressed his wish to conclude this study by a functional characterisation of the candidate genes associated with the mushroom bodies, although he admitted that it might take them a few years until his team gets there. Nevertheless, his results so far are outstanding. I was particularly impressed with the scope of disciplines that his team unite to offer a solid and complete investigation of insect cognition, to an extent which I had never heard of before.

As usual, the seminar ended with some friendly drinks in our building’s Sky Lounge. Whilst overlooking Bristol on a sunny afternoon, Dr Montgomery expressed his excitement at the prospect of moving to our vibrant city and joining our just as vibrant academic team. I can say without a doubt that the sentiment is reciprocated.

Written by Violette Desarmeaux, Biology (MSci)

From protists to whales: predicting the future of biological systems

Posted on by dan.watts

Complex biological systems are notoriously unpredictable, but forecasting their fate has arguably never been more important. In a recent seminar in the School of Biological Sciences, Dr. Chris Clements describes his latest research in this emerging field at the interface of ecology and conservation science.

The world is facing an unprecedented biodiversity crisis. As mankind’s ecological footprint grows ever larger, the rate of environmental change continues to accelerate. Identifying at-risk populations or ecosystems before they are irretrievably lost or damaged is becoming an increasingly important goal for conservationists, but predicting how complex biological systems will respond to evolving pressures is challenging.

One way of forecasting the future trajectory of biological systems is to use system-specific models founded on a detailed understanding of the underlying ecological processes. In practice however, scientists’ ability to do this is constrained by a scarcity of in-depth knowledge for the vast majority of ecosystems. An alternative strategy is to concentrate on inferring changes in the underlying state of the system from trends in more readily available data, such as estimates of population abundance. This approach is based on detecting statistical patterns or ‘early warning signals’, which can potentially be used to alert conservationists to the imminent danger of a sudden and catastrophic shift within an ecosystem, or the impending collapse of a population. A large part of Dr. Clements’ current research is focused on testing and extending these techniques.

“Under sustained pressure, the system will eventually reach a tipping point where it is so unstable that even tiny disruptions can trigger an abrupt change”

Dramatic shifts within ecosystems can occur when a change in conditions overwhelms the capacity of the system to return to its original state. Under sustained pressure, the system will eventually reach a tipping point where it is so unstable that even tiny disruptions can trigger an abrupt change. A classic example is the rapid transformation of pristine coral reefs due to declines in the abundance of algae-grazing marine life. While transitions to so-called ‘alternative stable states’ are often difficult to reverse, in theory, it should be possible to detect them in advance: as tipping points approach, predictable changes in statistical signals should become apparent.

Despite the potential usefulness of abundance-based early warning signals, the inherently noisy nature of population estimates can sometimes lead to unreliable predictions. Animals living in complex and inaccessible landscapes are usually elusive, and it can be tricky to estimate population sizes with confidence. One possible solution to this problem is to combine or replace abundance-based early warning signals with information on trends in key individual traits, such as body size, which can be estimated more reliably. Crucially, shifts in the distribution of body sizes within the population at-risk can be indicative of deteriorating environmental conditions, and of a population under strain.

“Dramatic shifts in the variability of body size also predicted plummeting worldwide populations of blue, fin, sei and sperm whales during the historical period of commercial whaling”

By describing his recent experiments on microcosm populations of the predatory protist Didinium nasutum, Chris showed that the collapse of stressed populations was preceded by a sharp decline in mean body size. Switching focus to an analysis of whale populations during the 20th century, Chris went on demonstrate how dramatic shifts in the variability of body size also predicted plummeting worldwide populations of blue, fin, sei and sperm whales during the historical period of commercial whaling. In both cases, trait-based early warning signals produced more accurate predictions about timing of population collapses, compared to those based on measures of abundance.

While our understanding of trait-based early warning signals is progressing rapidly, there is still much to learn about how these techniques can be applied to identify at-risk biological systems in the real world, where populations differ markedly in the rate of environmental change they are exposed to. Using both mathematical models and experimental microcosms, Chris’s research group is currently focused on tackling a range of unresolved questions in this area.

Written by Andrew Szopa-Comley, PhD student in Biological Sciences



Ageing in a social world; what can animals tell us?

Posted on by jessica.camps

A prominent voice in the field of animal behaviour, Dr Lauren Brent discusses her research into the interaction of ageing and sociality with a fascinating look at the lives of two charismatic social mammals.

Dr Lauren Brent seems to live an animal behaviourist’s dream. Not only does she travel the world studying some of the world’s most interesting animals, but she also shines a light on the physiological and evolutionary explanations behind their behaviour. This Monday students and staff were treated to a look at how age affects an individual’s engagement with the social world, and on the flipside of this, how the pace at which individuals age is affected by social processes. These two themes were neatly explored using Dr Brent’s research on the southern killer whales of British Columbia and the charismatic rhesus macaques of Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico.

It became immediately apparent in the seminar how passionate Dr Brent is about her work and how carefully she selected the subjects for her research. Breaking the talk into two sections, she first spoke about how aged based differences in these two animal groups affect their social interactions. The killer whales were followed to see how this impacted on their collective movement, questioning whether, and if so why, older, post-reproductive females led group movement. On the other side of the world, data associated with grooming and aggressive encounters between female rhesus macaques were collected to see whether age affected the frequency and reciprocity of these social interactions.

“Southern resident killer whales are one of only five species known to undergo menopause”

Southern resident killer whales are one of only five species known to undergo menopause, and there is no sex-based dispersal in populations, with the family unit choosing to stay together for life and outbreeding. The long post-reproductive period of females (lasting any time up to fifty years) is similar to humans’ in its length, and it was unknown what influence this had on the sociality of the older females. In Dr Brent’s 2015 paper, a study of over nine years’ worth of video footage of the whales was visualised into leadership networks. This resulted in the discovery that in comparison to males, females were more likely to lead and that relative to younger females, post-reproductive female whales were the most likely leaders. To understand these results, further study was undertaken to find the situations in which the older females were more likely to lead. This research revealed that older females were more likely to lead when populations of chinook salmon (the species making up at least 85% of southern killer whale diet) were low. It was apparent then that as their age increased female whales became more important in directing the collective movement of the pod, perhaps a clear indicator that the enhanced world experience that comes with age influences how these individuals engage with their social world.

“The population of rhesus macaques on Coyo Santiago was perfect for her research because of its extensive life history records and closed gene pool”

Described by Dr Brent as ‘despotic and nepotistic’, the population of rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago was perfect for her research because of its extensive life history records and closed gene pool. Like the killer whales, the social structure of the population was explained as being a close-knit community in which the females stay (philopatry) but where the males disperse. Habituating a predator-free, food-rich environment exposed the social pressures of group living and highlighted the aggressive, competitive nature of the macaques. To see if the age of the individuals affected the frequency and intensity of their social interactions, the exposure of females to grooming and aggressive encounters was studied. No evidence was found to show older females received less grooming than younger females, and no evidence was found that they ‘gave’ less aggression. However, it was discovered that older females gave out less grooming and received less aggression, clearly showing at some level age is affecting social engagement. Dr Brent discussed with us the questions left to answer as a result of this research; these older females were still active and engaged with the group, but what were the consequences of age in relation to this interaction which meant they were received differently by their relatives?

To analyse the interaction between ageing and sociality from the opposite direction, Dr Brent now wanted to see whether the pace at which individuals age is affected by social processes. In the macaques, it as was hypothesised that more socially integrated females lived longer. In this study, as a proxy for social integration, the number of close relatives in the troop was recorded for each of the 276 females in the study. Dr Brent revealed to us that for ‘prime-aged females between the ages of 6 and 17, every relative added decreased the probability of dying the next year by 2.3 %’. Interestingly, this was not the same for older females, where their level of social integration had no effect on their survival the next year. Again, this poses the question of why; as Dr Brent proposed, “do females have an alternative route to success?’.

The lecture was rounded off with an exclusive look at some of Dr Brent’s unpublished research and a first look at the new projects she has coming up, including investigating the possible evolutionary drivers behind sociality and ageing. The audience was also left with some questions to think about regarding the physiology behind ageing in a social world. Do all tissues age at the same pace? Are they equivalently impacted by sociality? And is this ageing the same for males and females? While ageing may be the focus of this field, it is young in its development and there are many exciting questions yet to be answered.

Written by Esme Hedley, Biology (BSc)



“Rewilding is active, controversial, exciting and happening”

Posted on by jessica.camps

One of the frontiers in the UK, Dr. Paul Jepson outlined his journey engaging with the process of rewilding, beginning in 2005, when he heard about work being undertaken in the Netherlands.

Rewilding is the process of restoring ecosystem dynamics and function at various levels; it can be condensed into the ‘3 C’s’;

 

  1. Securing core areas
  2. Connecting these core areas
  3. Re-introducing large carnivores

The loss of micro-habitat diversity due to the reduction of megafauna and large herbivores brings into focus the severe need to restore ecosystem function around the world on a large scale. Rewilding has been suggested as a solution to this. It aims to generate new natures that are ecologically richer than those before. As Paul said – it’s all about moving forward.

The study and application of rewilding has become much more prevalent in recent years with many articles and scientific papers being released on the subject. Despite being still in its relative infancy, there are many current cases of rewilding such as species reintroduction in the UK and the development of hybrid ecosystems in Australia.

The development of rewilding may signify a new environmental narrative in which people can readily challenge governments to take actions to change the recovery and wellness in nature to surpass previous standards. Dr. Jepson’s narrative structure of ‘Recoverable Earth’, in which recovery of the environment was the final outcome, was a refreshing notion.

Paul spoke briefly about the rewilding poster child project in Nijmegen in the Netherlands:

This project was highly successful and created a huge diversity of habitats within the small area which boosted the public opinion of the scheme. Dr Jepson also spoke about the vast socio-economic benefits of rewilding with its positive impact on property values, life quality and job opportunities in Nijmegen.

Controversies surrounding rewilding included the mention of the starvation of large herbivores that were reintroduced into the Oostvaarderplassen nature reserve and the consequent public outrage in the Netherlands. Paul spoke about ‘kept wild’ animals in rewilding schemes as wild animals under management by humans (as is the norm in Southern Africa) being the most viable way to tackle current restrictions faced by domesticated animal laws; such the legal requirement to remove a carcass of a domestic animal within 3 days of death. This restricts the processes associated with carcass and scavenger ecology, which in turn restricts trophic expansion within the rewilding environment. De-domestication policies are being thought up that will enable rewilding schemes to have maximum success in trophic expansion through carcasses of ‘kept wild’ animals being reintroduced into food chains.

The seminar was closed with some thoughts on the future of rewilding. Paul spoke about the exciting future projects that rewilding has to offer and the likelihood that they will interlink with advances in technologies within the ever-expanding areas of biological sciences.

Written by Nina Blampied (year 2 Zoology BSc)