A COMMONWEALTH SPECIAL RESEARCH CENTRE
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CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS OF COASTAL CITIES A COMMONWEALTH SPECIAL RESEARCH CENTRE |
The University of Sydney |
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ACADEMIC STAFF
A major focus of my work over the last few years has been the social behaviour of animals, particularly fishes. Areas of particular interest are: Mechanisms of social recognition in fish. Fish are capable of recognising and differentiating between their conspecifics. In freshwater fishes, social recognition is known to be achieved using a combination of different sensory cues though recent findings suggest that chemical cues may be of greatest importance. The chemical cues produced by individuals are strongly influenced by both local habitat use and diet, allowing fish to distinguish between members of their local population. It is this ability that underpins their social organisation into shoals, territorial assemblages and dominance hierarchies. Ecotoxicology and social recognition. Traditional toxicological approaches concerned themselves with the amount of a given pollutant required to kill an organism over a specified amount of time. Lately, however, there has been a growing appreciation that sub-lethal levels of pollutants can have long-term effects. Whilst a toxin might not kill an organism, it may induce subtle behavioural or physiological effects which may ultimately result in what researchers have termed ‘ecological death’. My particular interest in this field is in the potential for aquatic contaminants to disrupt chemical communication between fish and therefore to block social recognition. This can affect shoal formation or promote aggression by destabilizing dominance hierarchies. Collective decision–making and leadership in animal groups. Throughout their lives, animals are continually required to make decisions. In the case of social animals, these decisions are affected and modified by the actions of other group members. The process whereby individuals in a group appear to reach a ‘consensus’ on a course of action, for example on a direction of travel, even when some individuals in the group may have a preference for an alternative, is known as collective decision-making. If a group is going to remain together, its members must act with unanimity of purpose, or the group will fragment and the advantages of group living will be reduced or even lost for all. At present, we still have comparatively little knowledge of how groups of animals – especially vertebrate animals - really ‘work’ in this context. The vast majority of studies on fish behaviour have focussed on freshwater fishes. Comparatively little work has been done on marine fishes, especially temperate species. As a result, there are some major gaps in our knowledge of the social organisation of marine fish communities, especially in terms of how they recognise and communicate with one another - their sensory biology – and how this is affected by anthropogenic pollution. Sub-tidal and estuarine fish species, especially those close to cities, are perhaps the most exposed of all marine fish species to anthropogenic chemicals and this will be the focus of my research efforts over the next few months.To 2007: List of publications by Ashley Ward Coolen, I., Ward, A.J.W., Hart, P.J.B. & Laland, K.N.(2005) Foraging nine-spined sticklebacks prefer to rely on public information over simpler social cues. Behavioural Ecology 16 (5): 865-870 Croft, D.P., James, R., Ward, A.J.W., M. S. Botham, D. Mawdsley & Krause, J. (2005) The structure of social networks and association patterns in fish. Oecologia 143 211-219. Griffiths, S.W. & Ward, A.J.W. (2006) Learned recognition of conspecifics. In: Fish Learning & Behaviour (Edited by Culum Brown, Kevin Laland & Jens Krause). Hart, P.J.B., Webster, M.M. & Ward, A.J.W. (2008) Foraging strategies in fish. In: Fish Behaviour (Eds: Magnhagen, C., Braithwaite, V., Forsgren, E. & Kapoor, B.G.). Science Publisher, Inc., Enfield, USA Hoare, D.J., Ward, A.J.W., Couzin, I.D., Croft, D.P. & Krause, J. (2001) A grid-net technique for the analysis of fish positions within free-ranging shoals. Journal of Fish Biology 59 1667-1672. Krause, J., Hoare, D.J., Croft, D., Lawrence, J., Ward, A., Ruxton, G.D., Godin, J-G.J. & James, R. (2000) Fish shoal composition: mechanisms and constraints. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 267 2011-2017. Krause, J., Ward, A.J.W., Croft, D.P. & James, R. (2008) Group living and social networks. In: Fish Behaviour (Eds: Magnhagen, C., Braithwaite, V., Forsgren, E. & Kapoor, B.G.). Science Publisher, Inc., Enfield, USA Krause, J., Ward, A.J.W., Jackson, A., Ruxton, G.D., James, R. & Currie, S. (2005) The influence of differential swimming speeds on composition of multi-species fish shoals. Journal of Fish Biology 67 866-872. Krause, J., Ward, A.J.W., Jackson, A., Ruxton, G.D., James, R. & Currie, S. Krause, J., Ward, A.J.W., Jackson, A., Ruxton, G.D., James, R. & Currie, S. (2005) The influence of differential swimming speeds on composition of multi-species fish shoals. Journal of Fish Biology 67 866-872. Ward A.J.W., Webster, M.M. & Hart, P.J.B. (2007) Social recognition in wild fish populations. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 274 1071-1077 Ward, A.J.W. (2008) Questions and Answers: Saltwater Aquarium Fishes, TFH Publications, New Jersey. ISBN 0793806623 and ISBN Ward, A.J.W. (2007) Questions and Answers: Freshwater Aquarium Fishes, TFH Publications, New Jersey. ISBN 0793806216 and ISBN Ward, A.J.W. & Hart, P.J.B. (2003) The effects of kin and familiarity on interactions between fish. Fish & Fisheries 4 348-358. Ward, A.J.W. & Krause, J. (2001) Body length assortative shoaling in the European minnow, Phoxinus phoxinus. Animal Behaviour 62 617-621 Ward, A.J.W., Axford, S. & Krause, J. (2003) Cross-species familiarity in shoaling fishes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 270 1157-1161 Ward, A.J.W., Axford, S. & Krause, J. (2002) Mixed-species shoaling in fish: the sensory mechanisms and costs of shoal choice. Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology 52 182-187. Ward, A.J.W., Botham, M.S., Hoare, D.J., James, R., Broom, M., Godin, J.-G.J. & Krause, J. (2002) Association patterns and shoal fidelity in the three-spined stickleback. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 269 2451-2455 Ward, A.J.W., Duff, A.J. & Currie, S. (2006) Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 63 377-382. Ward, A.J.W., Duff, A.J. Horsfall, J.S. & Currie, S. (in press) Scents and scents-ability: Pollution disrupts chemical social recognition and shoaling in fish. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1283 Ward, A.J.W., Hart, P.J.B. & Krause, J. (2004) Assessment and assortment: how fishes use local and global cues to choose which school to go to. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B Biology Letters 271 S328-S330 Ward, A.J.W., Hart, P.J.B. & Krause, J. (2004) The effects of habitat- and diet-based cues on association preferences in three-spined sticklebacks. Behavioral Ecology 15 925-929. Ward, A.J.W., Hoare, D.J., Couzin, I.D., Broom, M. & Krause, J. (2002) The effects of parasitism and body length on positioning within wild fish shoals. Journal of Animal Ecology 71 10-14. Ward, A.J.W., Holbrook, R.I., Krause, J & Hart, P.J.B. (2005) Social recognition in sticklebacks: The role of direct experience and habitat cues. Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology 57 575-583 Ward, A.J.W., Thomas, P., Hart, P.J.B. & Krause, J. (2004) Correlates of boldness in three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology 55 561-568. Ward, A.J.W., Webster, M.M. & Hart, P.J.B. (2006) Intraspecific food competition in fish. Fish & Fisheries 7 231-261 Webster, M.M., Atton, N, Ward, A.J.W. and Hart, P.J.B. (2007) Turbidity and foraging rate in threespine sticklebacks: the importance of visual and chemical prey cues. Behaviour 144 1347-1360. Webster, M.M., Goldsmith, J., Ward, A.J.W. & Hart, P.J.B. (2007) Habitat specific chemical cues influence association preferences and shoal cohesion in fish. Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology 62 273-280 Webster, M.M., Ward, A.J.W. and Hart, P.J.B. (in press) Shoal and prey patch choice by co-occurring fish and prawns: inter-taxa use of socially transmitted cues. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1178 Webster, M.M., Ward, A.J.W., Hart, P.J.B. (2007) Boldness is influenced by social context in threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) Behaviour 144 351-371 Wright, D., Ward, A.J.W., Croft, D.P. & Krause, J. (2006) Social organisation, grouping and domestication in fish. Zebrafish 3 141-155.
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