The theme of my research is to understand how fish use vision to recognize both animate and inanimate objects in their environment.
My current research is focused on determining how fish cope with changes in the appearance of objects during motion. Recognition of 3D objects can be a difficult task as the appearance of some objects can change drastically depending on the angle from which they are viewed. Recognition during motion presents a particularly challenging problem as the appearance of an object is continuously changing.
This is a particular issue for animals that use landmarks to navigate. For fish, this problem may be further compounded by the fact that, unlike surface-bound animals, fish can freely move vertically, which could potentially increase the number of approach views to an object.
Using behavioural experiments I am exploring what adaptations fish have to ensure landmark recognition is both fast and accurate.
