Associate Professor Terry Ord, Director of Research at UNSW Science’s School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES,) has actually received the Quest Award from the United States Animal Behavior Society (ABS). Based on several elections from senior scientists and discipline leaders throughout the United States, the award identifies an exceptional influential contribution in animal behaviour.
A/Prof. Ord has actually been acknowledged for his “outstanding seminal contribution uncovering the broad macroevolutionary consequences of sexual selection, natural selection and phylogeny in shaping differences and similarities in animal behaviour across large groups of closely related species”. He is the very first Australian to win the Quest Award and just the 2nd Australian to win any ABS award.
“I was shocked when I was told I had won the Quest Award. You hope your work will have some type of legacy, but to be acknowledged with an international award like this is such a surprise. I couldn’t be more thrilled,” A/ Prof. Ord said. “It suggests whatever when others acknowledge you’ve done something of worth.
“Studying animal behaviour and development in the wild can be truly tough. Sometimes you question whether it’s all worth it, specifically when you’re having problem with conditions in the field. If you’re not soaked to the bone, you’re sweltering in the heat.
“To have some of the world’s leading scientists tip a hat to you like this is validation that what I’m doing really is worth all the hard work.”
UNSW Dean of Science, Scientia Professor Sven Rogge, praised A/Prof. Ord on the award.
“Terry is a leader in researching how evolution operates in nature, what drives diversity over evolutionary and ecological timescales, and why species live where they do. His focus is explaining why animals behave the way they do, and he has adopted a novel approach that combines ‘old school’ methods with the use of robotics.”
Read more: Same dance, various types: how natural choice drives typical behaviour of lizards
A report from among A/Prof. Ord’s nominators said, “While much of Terry’s work has focused on lizards and the evolution of their territorial displays, the questions he addresses have broad implications for our understanding of animal communication and evolution more generally. Why do animals behave the way they do and why does that behaviour vary among closely related species? It’s irrelevant whether you study birds, mammals, fish, insects or any other taxonomic system, Terry’s contributions have implications for all taxa.”
A/Prof. Ord’s “curiosity-driven science” likewise equates well to transmit media and his research study has actually included in numerous BBC Attenborough documentaries. Elaborate behavioural display screens of sliding lizards included in Planet Earth II (2016) and the behaviour of land-dwelling blenny fishes in Blue Planet II (2017).
An integrative method weding the ‘old’ with the ‘new’
A/Prof. Ord’s method is ‘old school’ in the sense that it relies greatly on behavioural observation and a comprehensive understanding of the nature of a types, the nominator’s report said.
“His research also shows how natural history observations can be central to answering big conceptual questions. How does adaptation unfold? Why is there diversity – or lack thereof – in behaviour across species? What role does evolutionary history play in shaping the way animals respond to present-day challenges?”
A/Prof. Ord is popular for his combination of comprehensive field research studies of behaviour with advanced relative approaches to reveal macroevolutionary procedures in behavioural development with the unique usage of robotics to ‘ask the animals’ to validate casualty. Constructing and setting the robotics himself, A/Prof. Ord utilizes them to carry out playbacks to free-living animals to examine the significance of signals in animal interaction systems.
A photo of A/Prof. Ord’s contributions to the field
Some of A/Prof. Ord’s contributions to our existing understanding of animal behaviour noted in the nominator’s report consist of:
Signal intricacy and male-male competitors: During his graduate research study, A/Prof. Ord was the very first to discover that the strength of aggressive interactions can drive the development of progressively intricate territorial signals throughout lizard types.
Signal adjustment and sound: A/Prof. Ord was the very first to discover that lizards utilizing visual display screens are simply as most likely to be affected by ecological sound — in the form of windblown greenery — as acoustically interacting types, and to adopt a method of overemphasizing screen motions that is similar to vocalising animals increasing the volume of their calls.
Behavioural plasticity and its function in adaptive development: A/Prof. Ord was among the very first to reveal how the versatility of behaviour – its contextual plasticity – enables lizards to customize their signals to the fundamental conditions of the environment, and seriously how this plasticity consequently affects the adaptive development of those signals as types colonise brand-new environments.
Widespread convergent development in animal interaction: Most just recently, A/Prof. Ord has actually demonstrated how the phenomena of plasticity and adjustment to ecological sound is practically common throughout all animal types and has actually consistently caused the independent development of animals utilizing similar methods to handle ecological sound. He has actually revealed that this duplicated, convergent development of behaviour has actually happened at a huge scale throughout animal groups, consisting of bugs, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, and throughout sensory methods where animals are utilizing noise, vision or touch in their social interaction.
Read more: Fish development in action: land fish required to adjust after leap out of water
Impact of predation on obvious behaviour: In a brand-new research study, A/Prof. Ord has actually modified the gold requirement for determining predation in the wild. He has actually made a significant advance in utilizing robotics to study animal behaviour by standardizing numerous robotic victim mimics to test how obvious behaviour effects predation threat.
Why evolutionary history matters in animal behaviour: A/Prof. Ord has actually demonstrated how entire groups of carefully associated types can carry out the very same behaviour with little variation amongst types since it has actually been maintained in descendent types in spite of countless years of development. This is very important for our understanding of animal behaviour since it reveals the occasions happening in deep evolutionary history can explain the presence of behaviour that otherwise may be difficult to explain from contemporary interactions. This discovery is possibly among A/Prof. Ord’s essential contributions in animal behaviour since it exposes what can’t be comprehended from studying single types in seclusion of their evolutionary history.
Behavioural plasticity and its function in colonisation: A/Prof. Ord has actually obtained unusual insights from free-living fishes that reveal the crucial function that the versatility of behaviour plays in permitting animals to at first endure in unique environments. That is, plasticity in foraging behaviour and activity has actually permitted marine blenny fishes to gradually get into land and make use of the conditions special to a life out of the water.
