̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Zoology

Cambridge Festival Speaker Spotlight: Charlotte Andrew

zs332 — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 16:33:35 +0000

Charlotte Andrew is a PhD student in the Insect Biomechanics Group in the Department of Zoology. Her research explores the mechanical implications of weather conditions on insect trapping in carnivorous plants.

̽��ֱ��coral whisperer

lkm37 — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 09:41:11 +0000

Duygu Sevilgen has built a coral lab in the basement of an old Zoology building. Here, 10 experimental tanks host multicoloured miniature forests, with each tank representing a different marine environment. Duygu uses extremely small sensors to record the fine details of coral skeletons and listen to their dialogue with algae. In doing so, she determines how much change corals can bear, and improves our chances of saving them in the wild.

Why animals talk

lkm37 — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:51:54 +0000

Dr Arik Kershenbaum listens to wolves, gibbons and dolphins to reveal the messages they send one another. His work challenges our assumptions about what animals are capable of, and affirms what makes humans truly unique.

Fish bellies, fava beans and food security

plc32 — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:20:27 +0000

Cambridge Zero and Cambridge Global Food Security gather academics and experts to share solutions for the planet’s looming food production problem.

Ageing cuttlefish can remember the details of last week’s dinner

jg533 — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 07:04:06 +0000

̽��ֱ��results, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, are the first evidence of an animal whose memory of specific events does not deteriorate with age.

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Caen, conducted memory tests on 24 common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis. Half of these were 10-12 months old – not-quite adult, and the other half were in old age at 22-24 months – equivalent to humans in their 90s.

“Cuttlefish can remember what they ate, where and when, and use this to guide their feeding decisions in the future. What’s surprising is that they don’t lose this ability with age, despite showing other signs of ageing like loss of muscle function and appetite,” said Dr Alexandra Schnell in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, first author of the paper.

As humans age, we gradually lose the ability to remember experiences that happened at particular times and places – for example, what we had for dinner last Tuesday. This is termed ‘episodic memory’, and its decline is thought to be due to deterioration of a part of the brain called the hippocampus.

Cuttlefish do not have a hippocampus, and their brain structure is dramatically different to ours. ̽��ֱ��‘vertical lobe’ of the cuttlefish brain is associated with learning and memory. This does not deteriorate until the last two to three days of the animal’s life, which the researchers say could explain why episodic-like memory is not affected by age in cuttlefish.

To conduct the experiment, the cuttlefish were first trained to approach a specific location in their tank marked with a black and white flag. Then they were trained to learn that two foods they commonly eat were available at specific flag-marked locations and after specific delays. At one spot, the flag was waved and a piece of king prawn, their less preferred food, was provided. Live grass shrimp, which they like more, was provided at a different spot where another flag was also waved - but only every three hours. This was repeated for four weeks.

Then the cuttlefishes’ recall of which food would be available, where, and when was tested. To make sure they hadn’t just learned a pattern, the two feeding locations were unique each day. All the cuttlefish – regardless of age – watched which food first appeared at each flag and used that to work out which feeding spot was best at each subsequent flag-waving. This suggests that episodic-like memory does not decline with age in cuttlefish, unlike in humans.

“ ̽��ֱ��old cuttlefish were just as good as the younger ones in the memory task – in fact, many of the older ones did better in the test phase. We think this ability might help cuttlefish in the wild to remember who they mated with, so they don’t go back to the same partner,” said Schnell.

Cuttlefish only breed at the end of their life. By remembering who they mated with, where, and how long ago, the researchers think this helps the cuttlefish to spread their genes widely by mating with as many partners as possible.

Cuttlefish have short lifespans – most live until around two years old – making them a good subject to test whether memory declines with age. Since it is impossible to test whether animals are consciously remembering things, the authors used the term ‘episodic-like memory’ to refer to the ability of cuttlefish to remember what, where and when specific things happened.

This research was funded by the Royal Society and the Grass Foundation.

Reference
Schnell, AK et al: ‘Episodic-like memory is preserved with age in cuttlefish.’ Proceedings of the Royal Society B, August 2021. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1052

Cuttlefish can remember what, where, and when specific things happened – right up to their last few days of life, researchers have found.

̽��ֱ��old cuttlefish were just as good as the younger ones in the memory task

Alexandra Schnell

Ageing cuttlefish can remember the details of last week’s dinner

Phuket@photographer.net

Cuttlefish

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Neglected baby beetles evolve greater self-reliance

ta385 — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 09:01:00 +0000

In gardens, parks and woods across the UK, the Sexton burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides quietly buries dead mice and other small vertebrates to create edible nests for its young.

Most parents remove the animal’s hair and slash the flesh of the carcass to help their newly-hatched larvae crawl inside. Typically they also stay on to defend and feed them, but levels of care vary and larvae can survive without their parents.

In a laboratory in Cambridge’s Zoology Department, researchers exploited the insect’s unusual natural history to establish two starkly different experimental populations and explore how parental behaviour drives evolution.

̽��ֱ��study, published today in the journal Nature Communications shows that larvae evolve distinctive adaptations in response to the different levels of parental care.

̽��ֱ��scientists behind the research exposed hundreds of beetles to two levels of parental care, over 13 generations. In a No Care environment, parents were removed as soon as they had prepared their mouse carcass nest but before their larvae had hatched. By contrast, in the Control environment, the parents were allowed to care for their young until they were ready to leave home.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that when parents fed meat to their babies’ mouth-to-mouth, the larvae evolved relatively smaller mandibles. These horizontally-aligned bladelike jaws play a vital role in the larva’s life, enabling them to enter the carcass and feed on the flesh once inside, but they are less important when parents help their young to feed.

“By contrast, when the parents were removed from their young and larvae were forced to self-feed, the larvae evolved significantly larger jaws to compensate for the lack of help,” said Benjamin Jarrett, who led the study.

Many previous studies have shown that social interactions in animals can drive evolutionary change through arms races which cause traits to become increasingly exaggerated. But animals also cooperate and it has been argued that when one individual contributes more, this can diminish traits in the less active social partner. Rarely, however, has direct evidence of this process been obtained.

So what are the larval mandibles like in natural populations, where the level of parental care is very variable from family to family? Here the researchers found that larval jaws are consistently large on average, regardless of the size of the larva.

“They seem to be anticipating the worst possible scenario of receiving no help at all. This looks like a conservative bet-hedging strategy for survival,” said Jarrett.

“Whether parents eventually decide to stay or go, the larva are equipped with large jaws and so can fend for themselves if necessary.”

̽��ֱ��laboratory’s experimental populations of beetles are continuing to evolve and are now in the 35th generation of experiencing different levels of parental care.

“Our ongoing research investigates the importance of the social environment in evolution. We are watching the way that evolution unfolds in these experimental populations and they constantly teach and surprise us,” said Professor Rebecca Kilner, senior author of the paper.

“ ̽��ֱ��better our understanding of how evolution works, the better able we are to predict how animals will evolve in a changing world”.

Reference:
Benjamin Jarrett et al. 'A sustained change in the supply of parental care causes adaptive evolution of offspring morphology.' Nature Communications (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06513-6

A new study reveals that when burying beetle larvae are denied parental support, they evolve bigger jaws to compensate.

Our ongoing research investigates the importance of the social environment in evolution

Rebecca Kilner

Courtesy of tomhouslay.com

Sexton beetle and larva

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Breeder meerkats age faster, but their subordinates still die younger

fpjl2 — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 11:05:36 +0000

In many cooperative species, the dominant breeders live longest despite the wear-and-tear of leadership and reproduction.

It has even been suggested these breeders hold the secret of immunity to age-related diseases. Some social insects, such as bees, do have breeders with genetic profiles that delay ageing – but this has never been documented in our fellow mammals.

Scientists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have now investigated the lifespans of meerkats: a highly social mammal that lives in groups of up to fifty, where a single dominant couple produce around 90% of the pups.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that the DNA of dominant breeders actually shows signs of accelerated ageing – yet they still consistently outlive the non-breeding subordinates in the group. Their study shows that dominants live an average of 4.4 years compared to subordinates 2.8 years.

This is because meerkat underlings are forced to take the often-fatal risk of leaving the safety of the group to find breeding opportunities, say scientists. Dominants rarely tolerate rival breeders, and violently eject subordinates from the group if they feel threatened.

On reaching the top of the social pecking order, however, meerkats remain ensconced within the group. ̽��ֱ��study shows an average subordinate spends more than six days each year in the wilderness, with this figure rising year-on-year. Dominant breeders are typically absent for under two hours per year.

“Dominant meerkats typically die due to internal stresses on their bodies, resulting in gradual, predictable declines until death. In humans we might describe this as ‘natural causes’,” said Dr Dominic Cram from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, lead author of the study published today in Current Biology.

“Subordinate meerkats die due to sudden, unpredictable circumstances such as exposure to predators, killing them instantly. A meerkat’s place within the social group shapes the mortality risks it faces,” he said.

“ ̽��ֱ��secret of long life for meerkats is not to battle the inevitable declines of ageing, but to be the ruler of your community, profiting from social support and cracking down on would-be rivals.”

Cram conducted the research as part of the Kalahari Meerkat Project: a long-term study of social behavior and ecology, run for over twenty years at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge by Professor Tim Clutton-Brock – a leading figure in the study of mammal societies.

̽��ֱ��project has helped train generations of zoologists through the observation of generations of meerkats, resulting in a wide range of data on the life histories of over 3000 meerkat individuals in over 100 groups.

̽��ֱ��team collected blood samples from the meerkats, and measured DNA sections called telomeres that help protect DNA from damage – much like the plastic caps on shoe-laces. As they erode over time, the chance of unravelling increases, so the length of telomeres can be used to estimate “biological age”.

While the telomeres of subordinate meerkats remained stable, dominant telomeres shrunk by a third in just 18 months – suggesting accelerated ageing caused by the toils of raising young and fending off rivals.

Yet the dominant meerkats still lived an average of 60% longer than subordinates, as the lower ranking meerkats were increasingly forced to risk more and more time outside the group as they grew older.

“Each year the subordinates spend over triple the amount of time outside the group as the previous year, reaching a peak of 35 days per year, or 10% of their time, outside the social group,” said Cram.

For subordinate males, all females in the group are their sisters or mother, so they must court females away from the group to avoid inbreeding. Subordinate females are bullied and chased away by the dominant when they become a reproductive rival.

Of all those that leave, some return – or try to – after a few days or weeks. A lucky few start their own group and become dominant breeders. Many are never seen again.

“Within a group, a sentinel always keeps look-out and sounds the alarm, allowing the meerkats to flee into burrows or bolt-holes. Each meerkat takes a turn on sentinel duty,” said Cram.

“Away from the group there is no early warning system, and meerkats are easy prey for eagles, goshawks and caracal. Letting down their guard to dig for food is too risky, so many starve for fear of being eaten.”

“Lone meerkats have even been known to be torn apart by members of a rival group. It’s a dangerous world for a solo meerkat.”

Despite rapidly ageing, dominant animals live longer because their underlings are driven out of the group – becoming easy targets for predators. ̽��ֱ��secret of a long meerkat life is to be “ruler of your community… cracking down on would-be rivals,” say scientists.

A meerkat’s place within the social group shapes the mortality risks it faces.

Dominic Cram

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Bridging the divide: philosophy meets science

sjr81 — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 15:03:08 +0000

̽��ֱ��Templeton World Charity Foundation Project, spearheaded by Professor Sarah Coakley, the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, saw three postdoctoral researchers placed into science labs around the ̽��ֱ�� with the aim of addressing the ever-widening gap between those working in the fields of science and those working in fields of philosophy and theology.

For three years, Daniel De Haan, Natalja Deng and Peter Woodford worked side-by-side with colleagues from the Department of Experimental Psychology, the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) and the Department of Zoology respectively – taking part in cutting-edge research, and being mentored by world-leading thinkers in their subject fields.

It is hoped that the huge success of this project – which saw unusually deep philosophical engagement with working scientists – will be a catalyst for similar experiments both in Cambridge and beyond.

Professor Coakley said: “Top level, path-breaking science can often go on in universities without any connections to the history and philosophy of science which is coming at the same material from a different direction. ̽��ֱ��philosophical questions are enormously pressing so we were delighted that some truly leading scientists at Cambridge were open to the possibility of having our three young researchers embedded with them.”

Dr Peter Woodford, who worked both in Cambridge’s Zoology labs and in the field in Africa to look at cooperation among meerkats, what makes them behaves the way they do, and how we as humans understand the value of selflessness, altruism and the care of others.

He said: “It was obviously a unique experience for any philosopher to have, seeing what animals are doing in their natural environment and asking why animals do what they do – that’s a central question of philosophy as well as science. ̽��ֱ��value of pursuing these big questions is to understand what we believe and why we believe it in a better way.”

Dr Natalja Deng, who worked on the cosmology strand of the project, alongside colleagues in DAMPT, said: “What does it mean to ask if God exists? And what does it mean to say that the universe had a beginning? If you ask yourself questions like this, you are doing philosophy.

“In order to do that, you need to talk to both theologians and physicists. They may not be used to talking to one another, but that’s all the more reason to bring them together in conversation. We were an experiment for this.”

Dr De Haan looked at the connections between cognitive neuroscience, psychology and philosophy for his strand of the project. As with his other Templeton colleagues, Daniel received formal training in his chosen subject areas to ensure they were up to date with the latest research and scientific developments in that particular field.

He said: “It was enormously helpful to spend time seeing what the day-to-day routines are, working in a lab and attending lectures. ̽��ֱ��people in my lab were open to the idea of having someone around from a different background and a different perspective.

“Academics in the humanities as well as the sciences are beginning to appreciate some of the difficulties arising from the extreme degrees of specialisation – where we are losing the ability to talk to each other.”

Added Coakley: “I’m more happy than I could have hoped. This was a unique experiment in how to create a new generation of scholars to learn this agility early in their careers and we have shown that if it’s possible in one of the top universities in the world for scientific and mathematical endeavour, it should be possible in other places, too.”

A unique three-year project to bridge the divide between science and philosophy – which embedded early-career philosophers into some of Cambridge’s ground-breaking scientific research clusters – is the subject of a new film released today.

Academics in the humanities as well as the sciences are beginning to appreciate some of the difficulties arising from the extreme degrees of specialisation – where we are losing the ability to talk to each other.

Daniel De Haan

Bridging the divide: Philosophy meets science

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