Bob Wong (ecologist)

Last updated

Bob B.M. Wong is a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, [1] Australia, and the Secretary of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology (ISBE). [2] He is a biologist and academic with his research focusing on the evolution of animal mating systems and behavior, and how investment in sex influences reproductive strategies and biological diversity. His current work focuses on the impacts of environmental change on animal behaviour and the evolutionary process. [1] In 2019 he became a subject editor for Animal Behaviour [3] and Oikos Journal. [4] He was granted a Future Fellowship by the Australian Research Council and is also Chair of the Organizing Committee for the upcoming 2024 Congress of the ISBE in Melbourne, Australia. He was born in Singapore [5] and currently resides in Melbourne, Victoria.

Contents

Wong is publicly open about his identity as a gay man. In describing himself and his career, he has stated "As an academic of Asian heritage and a member of the LGBTQI+ community, I am a strong advocate for diversity in STEM." [4]

Wong's research covers a range of animal species, from fish to invertebrates.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burying beetle</span> Genus of beetles

Burying beetles or sexton beetles, genus Nicrophorus, are the best-known members of the family Silphidae. Most of these beetles are black with red markings on the elytra (forewings). Burying beetles are true to their name—they bury the carcasses of small vertebrates such as birds and rodents as a food source for their larvae; this makes them carnivorous. They are unusual among insects in that both the male and female parents take care of the brood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lek mating</span> Type of animal mating behaviour

A lek is an aggregation of male animals gathered to engage in competitive displays and courtship rituals, known as lekking, to entice visiting females which are surveying prospective partners with which to mate. It can also refer to a space used by displaying males to defend their own share of territory for the breeding season. A lekking species is characterised by male displays, strong female mate choice, and the conferring of indirect benefits to males and reduced costs to females. Although most prevalent among birds such as black grouse, lekking is also found in a wide range of vertebrates including some bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and arthropods including crustaceans and insects.

<i>Aglais io</i> Species of butterfly

Aglais io, the European peacock, or the peacock butterfly, is a colourful butterfly, found in Europe and temperate Asia as far east as Japan. It was formerly classified as the only member of the genus Inachis. It should not be confused or classified with the "American peacocks" in the genus Anartia; while belonging to the same family as the European peacock, Nymphalidae, the American peacocks are not close relatives of the Eurasian species. The peacock butterfly is resident in much of its range, often wintering in buildings or trees. It therefore often appears quite early in spring. The peacock butterfly has figured in research in which the role of eyespots as an anti-predator mechanism has been investigated. The peacock is expanding its range and is not known to be threatened.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aposematism</span> Honest signalling of an animals powerful defences

Aposematism is the advertising by an animal, whether terrestrial or marine, to potential predators that it is not worth attacking or eating. This unprofitability may consist of any defenses which make the prey difficult to kill and eat, such as toxicity, venom, foul taste or smell, sharp spines, or aggressive nature. These advertising signals may take the form of conspicuous coloration, sounds, odours, or other perceivable characteristics. Aposematic signals are beneficial for both predator and prey, since both avoid potential harm.

Philopatry is the tendency of an organism to stay in or habitually return to a particular area. The causes of philopatry are numerous, but natal philopatry, where animals return to their birthplace to breed, may be the most common. The term derives from the Greek roots philo, "liking, loving" and patra, "fatherland", although in recent years the term has been applied to more than just the animal's birthplace. Recent usage refers to animals returning to the same area to breed despite not being born there, and migratory species that demonstrate site fidelity: reusing stopovers, staging points, and wintering grounds.

Cooperative breeding is a social system characterized by alloparental care: offspring receive care not only from their parents, but also from additional group members, often called helpers. Cooperative breeding encompasses a wide variety of group structures, from a breeding pair with helpers that are offspring from a previous season, to groups with multiple breeding males and females (polygynandry) and helpers that are the adult offspring of some but not all of the breeders in the group, to groups in which helpers sometimes achieve co-breeding status by producing their own offspring as part of the group's brood. Cooperative breeding occurs across taxonomic groups including birds, mammals, fish, and insects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mate choice</span> Mechanism for evolution

Mate choice is one of the primary mechanisms under which evolution can occur. It is characterized by a "selective response by animals to particular stimuli" which can be observed as behavior. In other words, before an animal engages with a potential mate, they first evaluate various aspects of that mate which are indicative of quality—such as the resources or phenotypes they have—and evaluate whether or not those particular trait(s) are somehow beneficial to them. The evaluation will then incur a response of some sort.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parental care</span> Behavior in animals of taking care of offspring

Parental care is a behavioural and evolutionary strategy adopted by some animals, involving a parental investment being made to the evolutionary fitness of offspring. Patterns of parental care are widespread and highly diverse across the animal kingdom. There is great variation in different animal groups in terms of how parents care for offspring, and the amount of resources invested by parents. For example, there may be considerable variation in the amount of care invested by each sex, where females may invest more in some species, males invest more in others, or investment may be shared equally. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed to describe this variation and patterns in parental care that exist between the sexes, as well as among species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collective animal behavior</span> Animal cognition

Collective animal behaviour is a form of social behavior involving the coordinated behavior of large groups of similar animals as well as emergent properties of these groups. This can include the costs and benefits of group membership, the transfer of information, decision-making process, locomotion and synchronization of the group. Studying the principles of collective animal behavior has relevance to human engineering problems through the philosophy of biomimetics. For instance, determining the rules by which an individual animal navigates relative to its neighbors in a group can lead to advances in the deployment and control of groups of swimming or flying micro-robots such as UAVs.

Dario Maestripieri is an Italian behavioral biologist who is known for his research and writings about biological aspects of behavior in nonhuman primates and humans. He is currently a professor of Comparative Human Development, Evolutionary Biology, and Neurobiology at The University of Chicago.

Deception in animals is the voluntary or involuntary transmission of misinformation by one animal to another, of the same or different species, in a way that misleads the other animal. Robert Mitchell identifies four levels of deception in animals. At the first level, as with protective mimicry like false eyespots and camouflage, the action or display is inbuilt. At the second level, an animal performs a programmed act of behaviour, as when a prey animal feigns death to avoid being eaten. At the third level, the deceptive behaviour is at least partially learnt, as when a bird puts on a distraction display, feigning injury to lure a predator away from a nest. Fourth level deception involves recognition of the other animal's beliefs, as when a chimpanzee tactically misleads other chimpanzees to prevent their discovering a food source.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conservation behavior</span>

Conservation behavior is the interdisciplinary field about how animal behavior can assist in the conservation of biodiversity. It encompasses proximate and ultimate causes of behavior and incorporates disciplines including genetics, physiology, behavioral ecology, and evolution.

An alternative mating strategy is a strategy used by male or female animals, often with distinct phenotypes, that differs from the prevailing mating strategy of their sex. Such strategies are diverse and variable both across and within species. Animal sexual behaviour and mate choice directly affect social structure and relationships in many different mating systems, whether monogamous, polygamous, polyandrous, or polygynous. Though males and females in a given population typically employ a predominant reproductive strategy based on the overarching mating system, individuals of the same sex often use different mating strategies. Among some reptiles, frogs and fish, large males defend females, while small males may use sneaking tactics to mate without being noticed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polyandry in animals</span> Class of mating system in non-human species

In behavioral ecology, polyandry is a class of mating system where one female mates with several males in a breeding season. Polyandry is often compared to the polygyny system based on the cost and benefits incurred by members of each sex. Polygyny is where one male mates with several females in a breeding season . A common example of polyandrous mating can be found in the field cricket of the invertebrate order Orthoptera. Polyandrous behavior is also prominent in many other insect species, including the red flour beetle, the adzuki bean weevil, and the species of spider Stegodyphus lineatus. Polyandry also occurs in some primates such as marmosets, mammal groups, the marsupial genus' Antechinus and bandicoots, around 1% of all bird species, such as jacanas and dunnocks, insects such as honeybees, and fish such as pipefish.

Sandra Lee Vehrencamp, is a scientist, teacher, and mentor who specializes in Behavioral ecology, with a geographical focus on avian species in Costa Rica. She served as a faculty member of Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology and Department of Neurobiology and Behavior and taught graduate students while conducting research until retiring as of October 2010. She currently resides in Ithaca, New York, with her husband, Jack Bradbury.

Maydianne Andrade is a Jamaican-born Canadian ecologist. She is known for her work on the mating habits of spiders, in particular spiders belonging to the Latrodectus species. In 2007, she was named a Canadian Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology.

Dietary conservatism is a foraging strategy in which individuals show a prolonged reluctance to eat novel foods, even after neophobia has been overcome. Within any given population of foragers, some will be conservative and some will be adventurous, an alternative strategy in which individuals readily accept novel food immediately after neophobia has waned. Dietary conservatism and neophobia are however distinct processes, distinguished by the persistence of an individual's reluctance to eat over repeated encounters with novel food and over long time periods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecology of fear</span> Psychological impact induced by predators

The ecology of fear is a conceptual framework describing the psychological impact that predator-induced stress experienced by animals has on populations and ecosystems. Within ecology, the impact of predators has been traditionally viewed as limited to the animals that they directly kill, while the ecology of fear advances evidence that predators may have a far more substantial impact on the individuals that they predate, reducing fecundity, survival and population sizes. To avoid being killed, animals that are preyed upon will employ anti-predator defenses which aid survival but may carry substantial costs.

Susan Denise Healy FRSE professor of biology at the University of St. Andrews, specialist in cognitive evolution and behavioural studies of birds and understanding the neurological basis of this. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.

References

  1. 1 2 "Bob Wong". School of Science. Monash University. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  2. "Executive Council Members of ISBE". History section. International Society for Behavioral Ecology. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  3. "Animal Behaviour Editorial Board" . Retrieved 5 June 2021.
    "B.M. Wong". www.journals.elsevier.com. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  4. 1 2 "WELCOME BOB WONG - NEW SE". www.oikosjournal.org. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  5. "Bob Wong". 500 Queer Scientists. Retrieved 2 February 2021.