Innes Cuthill

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Innes C. Cuthill (born 1960) is a professor of behavioural ecology at the University of Bristol. His main research interest is in camouflage, in particular how it evolves in response to the colour vision of other animals such as predators.

Contents

Life

Cuthill was educated at University College School, London. He read zoology at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1982 and gained his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford in 1985. He worked at Oxford until 1989 when he became a lecturer at the University of Bristol. [1] He became a professor there in 1998 and was head of the School of Biological Sciences from 2008 to 2012.

Work

Cuthill describes himself as "wear[ing] two hats, behavioural ecologist and sensory ecologist", [2] unified by seeking to explain the "design, through natural selection, of animal form and function." He states that his main research interest is the evolution of camouflage of one kind of animal, such as prey, in response to the colour vision of another kind of animal, such as a predator. [2]

He has contributed to over 180 research papers, mainly on vision and camouflage, [3] though he has also written on the use of statistics in biology, cited over 1600 times, [4] [3] and on guidelines for reporting the use of animals in research, cited over 2000 times. [5] [3]

Awards and distinctions

Cuthill won the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 1998, and the Nature and NESTA award for mentoring in science in 2005. From 2007 to 2010 he was president of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. [6] He gave the Tinbergen Lecture of 2014 [7] and won the 2018 ASAB medal for contributions to the science of animal behaviour. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camouflage</span> Concealment in plain sight by any means, e.g. colour, pattern and shape

Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier, and the leaf-mimic katydid's wings. A third approach, motion dazzle, confuses the observer with a conspicuous pattern, making the object visible but momentarily harder to locate, as well as making general aiming easier. The majority of camouflage methods aim for crypsis, often through a general resemblance to the background, high contrast disruptive coloration, eliminating shadow, and countershading. In the open ocean, where there is no background, the principal methods of camouflage are transparency, silvering, and countershading, while the ability to produce light is among other things used for counter-illumination on the undersides of cephalopods such as squid. Some animals, such as chameleons and octopuses, are capable of actively changing their skin pattern and colours, whether for camouflage or for signalling. It is possible that some plants use camouflage to evade being eaten by herbivores.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethology</span> Scientific objective study of animal behaviour

Ethology is a branch of zoology that studies animal behavior, usually with a scientific focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective study of animal behavior, usually referring to measured responses to stimuli or to trained behavioral responses in a laboratory context, without a particular emphasis on evolutionary adaptivity. Throughout history, different naturalists have studied aspects of animal behaviour. Ethology has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Charles O. Whitman, Oskar Heinroth, and Wallace Craig. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, the three recipients of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology combines laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to some other disciplines such as neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Ethologists typically show interest in a behavioral process rather than in a particular animal group, and often study one type of behavior, such as aggression, in a number of unrelated species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nikolaas Tinbergen</span> Dutch Zoologist, ethologist (1907–1988)

Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen was a Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning the organization and elicitation of individual and social behavior patterns in animals. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior.

Professor Geoffrey Alan Parker FRS is an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Liverpool and the 2008 recipient of the Darwin Medal. Parker has been called “the professional’s professional”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marian Dawkins</span> British biologist

Marian Stamp Dawkins is a British biologist and professor of ethology at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include vision in birds, animal signalling, behavioural synchrony, animal consciousness and animal welfare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicola Clayton</span> Professor of Comparative Cognition

Nicola Susan Clayton PhD, FRS, FSB, FAPS, C is a British psychologist. She is Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge, Scientist in Residence at Rambert Dance Company, co-founder of 'The Captured Thought', a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, where she is Director of Studies in Psychology, and a Fellow of the Royal Society since 2010. Clayton was made Honorary Director of Studies and advisor to the 'China UK Development Centre'(CUDC) in 2018. She has been awarded professorships by Nanjing University, Institute of Technology, China (2018), Beijing University of Language and Culture, China (2019), and Hangzhou Diangi University, China (2019). Clayton was made Director of the Cambridge Centre for the Integration of Science, Technology and Culture (CCISTC) in 2020.

The Tinbergen Lecture is an academic prize lecture awarded by the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB).

The ASAB Medal is a scientific award given by the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB). It is cast in bronze to a design by Jonathan Kingdon, awarded "annually for contributions to the science of animal behaviour - through teaching, writing, broadcasting, research, through fostering any of these activities, or through contributing to the affairs of ASAB itself."

Felicity Anne Huntingford FRSE is an aquatic ecologist known for her work in fish behaviour.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Troscianko</span>

Tomasz Stanisław Trościanko (1953–2011) (Tom) was born in Munich, at the time part of West Germany, of Polish parents, Anna and Wiktor Trościanko. As a stateless child, aged nine, he travelled alone to England to attend Fawley Court Polish school in Henley-on-Thames. He studied Physics at the University of Manchester and a subsequent job with Kodak led to a PhD in optometry and visual science at City University, London. From 2000 onward he was Professor of Psychology, first at the University of Sussex and then at the University of Bristol, where he worked until his death in 2011.

Iain Couzin is a British scientist and currently one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Department of Collective Behaviour and the chair of Biodiversity and Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz (Germany). He is known for his work on collective behaviour in animals that aims to understand the fundamental patterns responsible for evolution of such behaviour in taxa as diverse as insects, fish and primates. In recognition of his work, he has received several awards including the Searle Scholar Award in 2008, the Mohammed Dahleh Award in 2009, the National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award in 2012, the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 2013, the Lagrange Prize in 2019, and most recently the Falling Walls Life Sciences Prize and the Leibniz Prize in 2022.

John Dennis Carthy was a British zoologist and ethologist whose primary study subjects were the sensory systems and behaviour of invertebrates. He published 11 books and numerous scientific articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coincident disruptive coloration</span> Camouflage joining up separate parts of body

Coincident disruptive coloration or coincident disruptive patterns are patterns of disruptive coloration in animals that go beyond the usual camouflage function of breaking up the continuity of an animal's shape, to join up parts of the body that are separate. This is seen in extreme form in frogs such as Afrixalus fornasini where the camouflage pattern extends across the body, head, and all four limbs, making the animal look quite unlike a frog when at rest with the limbs tucked in.

The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) is a British organization founded in 1936 to promote ethology, and the study of animal behaviour. ASAB holds conferences, offers grants, and publishes a peer-reviewed journal, Animal Behaviour, first published in 1953. ASAB also runs a certification scheme so the public are able to seek advice about companion animals from appropriately qualified and experienced behaviourists (‘CCABs’).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Distractive markings</span>

Distractive markings serve to camouflage animals or military vehicles by drawing the observer's attention away from the object as a whole, such as noticing its outline. This delays recognition. The markings necessarily have high contrast and are thus in themselves conspicuous. The mechanism therefore relies, as does camouflage as a whole, on deceiving the cognition of the observer, not in blending with the background.

Timothy M. Caro is a British evolutionary ecologist known for his work on conservation biology, animal behaviour, anti-predator defences in animals, and the function of zebra stripes. He is the author of several textbooks on these subjects.

Patricia Monaghan is Regius Professor of Zoology in the Institute of biodiversity, animal health & comparative medicine at the University of Glasgow.

Julie Marie Harris has been Director of Research in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience (2011–21) and a Professor of Vision Science at the University of St Andrews. Her research investigates visual systems and camouflage.

Christine Nicol is an author, academic and a researcher. She is a Professor of Animal Welfare at the Royal Veterinary College and has honorary appointments at the University of Oxford and the University of Lincoln. She is the Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Animal Science.

References

  1. "Innes Cuthill". LinkedIn. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Professor Innes Cuthill". University of Bristol. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 "IC Cuthill". Google Scholar. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
  4. Nakagawa, Shinichi; Cuthill, Innes C. (2007). "Effect size, confidence interval and statistical significance: a practical guide for biologists". Biological Reviews. 82 (4): 591–605. doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.2007.00027.x. PMID   17944619. S2CID   615371.
  5. Kilkenny, Carol; Browne, William J.; Cuthill, Innes C.; Emerson, Michael; Altman, Douglas G. (2010). "Improving Bioscience Research Reporting: The ARRIVE Guidelines for Reporting Animal Research". PLOS Biology. 8 (6): e1000412. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000412. PMC   2893951 . PMID   20613859.
  6. "Professor Innes Cuthill". Camolab.
  7. "Tinbergen Lecturer". ASAB. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
  8. "Tinbergen Medal". ASAB. Retrieved 12 November 2018.