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Justin Marshall D. Phil My principle aim is to understand how other animals perceive their environment. As arrogant humans we tend to assume we are the pinnacle of evolution, however, certainly in sensory terms this is far from true. By taking a broad approach to visual systems, based around ecology but also including physiology, anatomy, behaviour and neural integration, I hope to decode the signals used by other animals. My interests spring from work on stomatopods (mantis shrimps), reef-dwelling crustaceans with the world's most complex colour vision system. These 'lowly' crustaceans possess 4 times as many colour receptors as humans, 4 of which sample the UV, a region of the spectrum to which we are blind. Stomatopods use colour signals to communicate with each other and it is this language of colour which interests me most at the moment. Colour is used by many animal groups such as reef fish, parrots and birds of paradise. Much of my work at present is an attempt to understand the different uses of colour throughout the animal kingdom. The way in which UV and other colours are used in animal communication is a major component of this work. Some of the questions to which we lack answers on the reef are as follows: Why are reef fish and other reef inhabitants often so brightly coloured? How can these groups afford to apparently be so obvious while others invest in camouflage? Are some animals, which appear obvious to our eyes, well camouflaged for the eyes of other animals? Work with light and a close proximity to The Great Barrier Reef has recently brought home to me the problems which the world's reef systems now face. I hope to be able to use my knowledge of light and the reaction af animals to it to help prevent the 90% destruction of all reef systems by 2050, the present conservative estimate. |
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