Calming effect of group living in social fishes

Group living is common across the animal kingdom. The ubiquity of sociality suggests that this lifestyle imparts a range of benefits.

However, the evolutionary drivers of individual variation in social behaviour within and among animal species remain obscure. One benefit of group living may come in the form of energy expenditure.

Group-living individuals may reduce energy expenditure by sharing the costs associated with daily activities, such as movement and finding food.

Social individuals may also benefit from the "calming effect", in which energy use is reduced as the group can take advantage of having "many eyes" to scan for predators and therefore reduce individual vigilance.

Using social fishes as models, this PhD project will combine techniques in animal behaviour, ecophysiology, and otolith geochemistry to explore the energetic consequences of sociality, with results applicable to social species from a range of taxa and habitat types.