Centre for the Integrative Study of Animal Behaviour

Value assessments by forager honey bees

Forager honey bees communicate the value of resources they have collected to their nest mates through symbolic dances.  How do foragers integrate the various energetic costs and benefits of their foraging trip to communicate a true picture to their nest mates? 

How do bees read dances?

Returning foragers dance to tell recruits the location of profitable food sources, but how do recruits know how much attention to give a dancer and when they have correctly read the dance?

Addiction in honey bees

How is honey bee behaviour affected by drugs of abuse?  Do honey bees become addicted to drugs of abuse?  This project will explore how drugs of abuse interfere with basic molecular pathways in the brain, and also test the utility of the honey bee as a model system for addiction studies.

Memory and memory retrieval in honeybees

A variety of behavioural experiments with free flying honeybees outdoors at the Animal Behaviour Facilities to investigate how honeybees deal with multiple memories

Learning, navigation, and foraging in Central Australian desert ants

A variety of field experimentation on Australia's most thermophilic ant, the red honey ant Melophorus bagoti, done at their habitat in the Alice Springs area over the summer (ideal for enrolment in Semester 2)

Functional principles in how humans learn to recognize faces

Behavioural ecology of cognition in humans testing functional principles of learning and memory, based on experimentation with controlled stimuli

Web decorations and prey capture in orb-web spiders

Experimentation setting up various webs with and without decorations in field cages at the Animal Behaviour Facilities, releasing a variety of prey (mostly flies), and measuring capture rate

Do Noisy and Bell Miners attend to individual differences in vocalisation structure?

Does parental mobbing lead to reduced nest predation?

Bell Miner Associated Dieback (BMAD)

Are bell miners the causative agent behind Eucalypt dieback in south-eastern Australia? (There is some scope to work with State Forests on this project).

I'm also interested in any other behavioural aspect of avian ecology, see my website/contact me for more details on these and other projects.

Spider perception

Analysis of motion perception in jumping spiders, visually-guided active hunters. A combination of 3D animation of 'real world' moving stimuli and psychophysical methods will be used as tools to explore the perceptual world of jumping spiders.

Contests in jumping spiders

Jumping spiders communicate through elaborate visual displays. This project will examine contest behaviour in Australian ant-mimicing jumping spiders, looking at communication, assessment of fighting ability in opponents and decision-making in aggressive interactions. In particular the methods of assessment underlying contest decision-making processes.

This is an opportunity for an enthusiastic student to make a valuable contribution to on-going research on aggression, contest behaviour and energetics, information gathering and decision-making in animals.

Vibratory signals in spider webs

The web is an extension of a spider's sensory world as well as being the arena for interactions with prey and conspecifics.

The project will examine responsiveness and predatory behaviour in spiders and how wind (environmental noise), damage, and debris in the web influence the transmission of vibratory signals, spider predatory behaviour and the efficiency of the web as an information-gathering device.

This is an opportunity for an enthusiastic student to contribute to research on signal transmission in spider webs using observational, video and laser vibrometry techniques.

Post-copulatory sexual selection in Queensland fruit flies

Queensland fruit flies commonly copulate for several hours, during which the males transfer both sperm and seminal fluids to their mates. Male seminal fluids contain factors that are powerful inhibitors of female sexual behaviour, preventing them from accepting later mates and thereby ensuring paternity for the female's first mate. There is a vast diversity of potential projects dealing with processes of sperm transfer and storage, mechanisms of sexual inhibition, strategic ejaculate allocation and usage, conflict between the sexes over female reproductive activity, and mechanisms of paternity assignment in Queensland fruit flies.

Arachnopsychology

Jumping spiders have extraordinary visual abilities and, rather than building webs, they use vision to stalk their prey like tiny cats. Jumping spiders are also known for remarkable feats of problem solving, target discrimination and navigation, and are becoming important subjects for studies of learning and memory. There are many opportunities for honours projects in the general area of jumping spider behaviour, perception and cognition.

What aspects of larval environment influence adult Queensland fruit fly quality?

Fitness of adult insects can depend to a large extent on resources available during the larval phase. An exciting opportunity exists for an enthusiastic, organised, and self-motivated student to study the role of larval conditions on adult quality in the Queensland fruit fly, an economically important pest of horticulture in eastern Australia. The results of this project will be applied to improve quality of sterile flies that are released as part of an area-wide integrated pest management program. The project may include any combination of behavioural, ecological and physiological studies.

Are laboratory-adapted Queensland fruit flies capable of utilising natural sources of nitrogen?

Feeding on sources of nitrogen affects longevity, sexual maturation, oogenesis, and mating performance of Queensland fruit flies (Q-flies). When used in sterile insect technique programs, Q-flies are not provided with dietary nitrogen prior to release, so if they have difficulty in locating and utilising natural sources of nitrogen they will not become sexually active. An enthusiastic, organised, and self-motivated student is sought to study sexual development, sexual performance, and longevity of fertile and sterile Q-flies when provided with natural sources of nitrogen, that will also include biochemical analyses of diets. The results of this project will be applied to improve quality of sterile flies that are released as part of an area-wide integrated pest management program.

Does feeding on phenylpropanoids improve male mating success?

(Mid-year intake only)

Feeding on naturally occurring and artificial phenylpropanoid chemicals has been shown to improve mating performance of male flies belonging to the genus Bactrocera. An enthusiastic, organised, and self-motivated student is sought to undertake novel research to determine whether the mating performance of male Queensland fruit flies is also improved by feeding on phenylpropanoids, including methyl eugenol and cue-lure. This behavioural study will contribute towards an understanding of the mechanisms driving attraction to phenylpropanoids that are used in traps to monitor populations of this major horticultural pest.