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Position held:
PhD Student in the Department
of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, co-supervised by
David Tolhurst
and Martin Stevens and funded
by a BBSRC CASE studentship. |
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| Research | ||
| My
PhD research will investigate the disruption of human motion perception
by camouflage patterns. Many animals face a substantial risk of predation,
and have therefore evolved a range of defences against this. This
often involves types of anti-predator colouration, such as camouflage.
However, other animals such as zebras, and many snakes, fish and insects
have striking patterns like stripes, zig zags and high contrast patches
of colour. Although such markings may sometimes be used in camouflage,
in many cases they apparently do not make the animal harder to see,
and their function is largely unknown. One largely untested hypothesis
is that such patterns may prevent a predator from accurately judging
prey’s speed and direction, preventing successful capture in
what is known as ‘motion dazzle’. Recent work has shown that some markings make it harder for humans to capture moving ‘prey’ on a computer touch screen; for example, it appears that striped patterns make it more difficult to catch objects that are moving across a screen when compared with other pattern types. My project will therefore investigate this phenomenon more thoroughly, conducting human psychophysical experiments to ask whether spatial patterning can disrupt motion perception, what types of marking can do this, what this tells us about real animal patterns in nature and how this can aid our understanding for human camouflage applications. Prior research I graduated in 2010 from Cambridge with a BA (Hons) in Physiology and Psychology, and in my final year completed a research project investigating the foraging behaviour of the Eurasian Jay, Garrulus glandarius, and in particular, their ability to make discriminations between two different amounts of food. |
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| Anna Hughes |
| Research |
Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge
CB2 3EJ, U. K.