Models can be tested with species, such as the Kentish plover, in which either sex can desert and leave the partner to bring up the young. Assessment strategies between males are being tested in the field with both skylarks and crickets. Why do animals feed, display, rest, etc. To answer these questions, we need to understand the costs and benefits of each behaviour, and the trade-offs between them. Modelling behavioural trade-offs and experimentally quantifying the costs and benefits of foraging, fat storage and body mass change in birds , forms a large area of mutual interest in our group.
Ant colonies embody all of the most important aspects of biological organisation .
The fundamental advantage of ant colonies as experimental biological materials is that they can be quickly taken apart and rapidly and easily put together again. Our focus is on the simple rules of interaction among worker ants that generate complexity and sophistication at the level of the colony. We have shown that the ability of ants to generate spatial structures in their societies is critical to their organisation. This work has been made possible by our development of dynamic, digital, image analysis systems . These systems are some of the most sophisticated of their kind used anywhere in the study of animal behaviour.