Fish Intelligence: Behavioural Complexity in an Underwater World

The Behavioural Complexity Lab (BCL), presents the temporary scientific exhibition Fish Intelligence: Behavioural Complexity in an Underwater World, at the Museu do Mar Rei D. Carlos, in Cascais.

Open to the public from 12 June to 14 September, the exhibition invites visitors to explore the surprising cognitive world of fishes through topics such as learning, memory, cooperation, social behaviour, and problem-solving.

Combining contemporary scientific research with immersive visual elements, the exhibition challenges the traditional view of fishes as simple organisms and highlights how environmental change can influence animal behaviour and cognition.

The exhibition opening will take place on 11 June at 17:30.

Daniel got 16 in his thesis within the MSc of Computer Science and Engineering

Great job Daniel! We are proud of you! 

Thesis title: Machine Learning in Marine Biology for Fish Detection and Recognition.

Patrícia got 18 in her thesis within the MSc in Marine Ecology! 

Great job Patrícia! We are proud of you! 

Thesis title: What happens to temperate reefs without cleaners?

José, Beatriz, João and Catarina participated in a joint writing retreat, coordinated by Peter McGregor (acta ethologica Editor-in-chief) with together Rui Oliveira's Integrative Behavioural Biology lab from GIMM.

Francisco got 19 in his thesis within the MSc in Marine Ecology! 

Great job Francisco! We are proud of you! 

Thesis title: Temperate cleaning stations are biodiversity drivers

João presented his work entitled: Cleaner gobies indirect effects on reef fish communities and grazing behaviour.
Congratulations João! 🎉

We found that during a heatwave, fish struggled with a simple task, such as associating a colour cue with a food reward. After a two-week recovery period, cleaners regained their cognitive abilities, successfully completing the task, but their brains showed lasting changes.
Congrats, Beatriz et al. !
Check out the plain language summary and the full paper here.

Raúl got 18 in his thesis within the Biostatistics Master! 

Great job Raúl! We are proud of you! 

Thesis title: Using supervised machine learning to quantify cleaning behaviour

We found that hypoxia yielded lower survival rates, smaller body sizes and inhibited predatory (increased latency to attack the prey) and anti-predator (camouflage) behaviours. Acute and chronic exposure to low oxygen produced similar effects on cognition (inability to socially learn, increased open-field activity levels, no changes in thigmotaxis). Congrats Melanie et al!

Our team is organising the 21th Congress of the Portuguese Ethological Society to be held in Lisbon on 5, 6 and 7 December, in partnership with MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa and FLAD - Luso-American Development Foundation. 

Dr. Catherine Sheppard just started in the Lab within ChangingMoods project! Cat comes from the UK and did a PhD at The University of Lancaster. Cat started doing fieldwork with Hawaiian cleaner wrasses earlier this month, and she's already a successful fish catcher! We are super excited to have you in the lab!

Congratulations to Maddalena and Tânia for securing competitive PhD fellowships with FCT! Amazing work! Looking forward for the next 4 years! 

Congrats Maddalena et al! 

In our new study we demonstrate that cleaner gobies, Elacatinus oceanops, exhibit cue-based decision-making, particularly when prioritizing larger plates, mirroring their natural tendency to prioritize larger predatory clients, emphasizing the need for further research on their cognition in various ecological contexts. Check it out here. 

FLAD media team visited MARE/Ciências ULisboa - Laboratório Maritimo da Guia to record a promo video for the AtlanticDiversa project! I think it looks great! Have a look here (in Portuguese).

Dr. Jade Sourisse just started in the Lab as a Post-doc under the project AtlanticDiversa! Jade comes from France and did a PhD at The University of Hong Kong. We are super excited to have you in the lab!

José was working with Ivan Nagelkerken, David Booth, Gigi Beretta and Angus Mitchel on cleaner wrasses expanding to temperate waters around Sydney. Thank you for hosting me, such a fun trip!

She will be representing our team and present her work on cleaner wrasse behaviour under climate change stressors  🐟🐠!

Thank you for the support!  🐟🐠

José Ricardo Paula was distinguished with the 4th edition of the Science Award Atlantic attributed by the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD). José received from His Excellency the President of the Portuguese Republic, Prof. Dr. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. The award provides 300.000 euros in funding in three years to develop a project that aims to improve the understanding of the role of cleaning mutualisms in the conservation of biodiversity, using emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

It was great to set new collaborations and to meet some old friends.

Congrats Beatriz Pereira, Simon et al! Here we found that transgenerational exposure to reduced oxygen and elevated temperature negatively affects amphipod survival and male mating behaviours, but evidence of adaptation and carry-over effects were observed. Check it out!

Congratulations Beatriz! Great job everyone!

It was great to see old friends and make new collaborations! Great talks everyone!

Neuromolecular responses in disrupted mutualistic cleaning interactions under future environmental conditions, with Dr. Celia Schunter Lab from HKU. Check it out here.

Gene losses, parallel evolution and heightened expression confer adaptations to dedicated cleaning behaviour, with Dr. Celia Schunter Lab from HKU. Check it out here!

She got 18/20! Great job Tânia! 

Thesis title: 

The hidden burden of sociality: Effects of simulated infections on social distancing within cleaning interactions 

Thanks Lexa and Mark for having us! Check out a short video about it here. 

This was part of a Research Topic edited by José Ricardo Paula, Xiaodan Wang, Chang Xu and Daniel C. Moreira. Check it out!

There's always reasons to celebrate, but after a hardworking month with proposal applications, experiments and writing - the lab deserved some great dim sum! Best of luck for Maddalena and Melanie on their proposals!! 🤞🏻

She got 18/20! Great job Marta! 

Thesis title: 

Impacts of ocean deoxygenation and hypoxia in the physiology and behaviour of cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis)

Check it out! Thank you so much Maria :)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boa8z6JvJV8 

Maria Pinto, a well-known sci-comm YouTuber, visited us to film an episode on fish intelligence! Stay tuned. https://www.youtube.com/@Seamemaria 

We celebrated our work throughout the year in a specially-themed lab meeting - our Italian team members taught us the skills of doing a great Pizza! (... and Beatriz started a pizza dough fight)

For our experiments, we needed to get our heads underwater and collect some parasites! Beatriz, Daniele, and Jose drove to the south of Portugal to set up some zooplankton emergence traps with the help of AIMM-Portugal. Thanks Joana and André!