Question: how long have you studied animals

Edward Codling answered on 17 Jun 2011:

Hi imaperson!

I started studying animals when I was doing my PhD (1999). I was studying how to use maths to describe the movement paths of animals. Some pictures of the sort of thing I looked at are here: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ecodling/EACresearch_observationmovement.htm

This work was very general – it could be applied to look at movement paths from lots of different animals. I then got more interested in the behaviour of animal groups: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ecodling/EACresearch_groupsmanywrongs.htm

However, to test the predictions from the simulations you can see in the link above, I had to test the theory with some experiments on real animals. I have recently been looking at the behaviour of coral reef fish (like Nemo) and also plankton (small bugs that live in the sea). One of the problems with studying animals is that they don’t always behave how you want them to – for this reason we also looked at human crowds as these were easier to control in experiments! http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ecodling/EACresearch_groupshumancrowds.htm

I have also studied how best to manage wildlife populations. This is important for things like fisheries where we need to make sure that we don’t take too many fish from the sea. Some of my work in this area has been used by the decision makers in the EU when they have to set fishing catch limits across Europe – it is always good when my work is used by people to help improve the protection of animal species!

So in summary – I have studied animals for the past 12 years – in lots of different ways!