Culum Brown 🇺🇦

Underwater kelp forests are losing a turf war nature.com/articles/d4158…

🔧🐟 Wrasses using rocks as tools? It's true! A new study shows tool use in reef fish is more common than we thought with deep roots in evolution. These clever fish are anything but simple! 📄 See the full article at: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Fish social learning and culture may well be important for conservation management. url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/WaNbCmO5wZsj…

Parental exposure to predation influences personality and laterality in stickback offspring; transgenerational impacts. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

@pgodfreysmith Personally, I think octopus throwing sand and rocks at one another counts as tool use.

One should not get hung up on definitions. But the differences are worth noting, and it does seem that 'narrow sense' tool use (Hunt, Gray, Taylor sense) is rare. Bringing about a physical interaction between prey and substrate while holding the prey might be a lot more common. 5

An interesting - & borderline - case of tool use in fish. Why borderline? The best definition of tool use I know is posted in a screenshot below. The fish in this new study are hitting prey (encased in shells) on fixed rocks... 1/🧵 x.com/lbmm_ufsc/stat…

@pgodfreysmith After Jane Goodall's original definition which was much more focussed on intention, the definition was hijacked by primatoligists. There are so many physics restrictions using tools underwater that the approach fish use is likely the best solution.

Did you know that fish also use tools? The research led by Juliette Tariel-Adam, titled “Fish Tool Use by New World Halichoeres Wrasses” expands scientific knowledge about this fascinating behavior of wrasses from the Halichoeres genus. See at: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Social learning and culture are key components of Fish behaviour but we ignore them in fisheries management. So what happens when we over Fish social Fish? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fa…

Topped the list for Animal Behaviour and Ecology this year!

Love your work on fish psychology and can we have a photo of the 3 spined stickleback please? I'm sure it's much more prosaic than my imagination :)

Fancy a PhD scholarship to work on prawn aquaculture and welfare? Contact Suhnil (sunil.kadri@cdu.edu.au) at CDU.

New paper from thefishlab doi.org/10.1007/s10071…

PhD positions to work on fish ecophys at U Gothenburg. How do fish respond to chaging temperature. web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/1035/…

To build a better world, stop chasing economic growth nature.com/articles/d4158…

There are 4 exciting PhD opportunities being offered this year in partnership with @UTAS_ through @aufrande ⭐️Positions: aufrande.eu/recruitment/op… ⭐️To apply: aufrande.eu/recruitment/ho… ⭐️Applications close: 24 January 2024 at 11:59 PM CET Allons-y⛷️

!!Funded PhD available (start 2024)!! Do you want to study #collectivebehaviour in weaver ants (in particular how they build their ultra-cool and totally unstudied silk nests), and develop #bioinspired #3Dprinting #swarmrobotics? Let me know! And please RT!

🚫 Stop the disaster! Octopus farming in Spain threatens both welfare and the environment. Demand the Canary Islands government objects now! #StopOctopusFarming #EndIt

We are excited to present: Improving Welfare and Reproducibility in Zebrafish Research - a 2.5 day workshop hosted by @UniofExeter @UoEBiosciences with support from the RSPCA! 🐟 Abstract submission is OPEN - more info and registration: science.rspca.org.uk/documents/d/sc… #3Rs #zebrafish

Christmas BBQ with the @FishLab_MQ @JTarielAdam @CulumBrown @shannonwkaiser

I'm very excited to announce that I was highly commended for Excellence in Higher Degree Research at MQ! This is awarded for current or former HDR candidates for outstanding research undertaken in the past four years.