Link to view the seminar recording.

Humans have brought about unprecedented changes to environments worldwide. For many species, behavioural adjustments represent the first response to altered conditions. Such behavioural modifications can potentially improve an organism’s prospects of surviving and reproducing in a rapidly changing world. However, not all behavioural responses are beneficial. Human-altered conditions, for instance, can undermine the reliability of sexual signals used by animals to assess potential suitors. Environmental changes can also impair sensory systems or interfere with physiological processes needed to mount an appropriate behavioural response. An understanding of behaviour could therefore be important in helping to explain why some species are able to survive, or even flourish, under human altered conditions, while others flounder. In this talk, Bob Wong considers the role that behaviour plays in determining the fate of species under human-induced environmental change, and discuss recent research in my Group investigating the impacts of pharmaceutical pollution on behaviour in fish.