New research opportunities in animal behaviour
Exciting new opportunities for postgraduate research students are opening up in the Centre for the Integrative Study of Animal Behaviour (CISAB) at Macquarie University.
CISAB has appointed a number of highly regarded researchers under the University's Concentrations of Research Excellence (CORE) scheme, each of whom will take on a number of postgraduate students.
The team is unique in Australia because it combines psychological and biological approaches to the study of animal behaviour.
Dr Andrew Barron
Dr Andrew Barron joined the team in June this year from ANU via the United States and the United Kingdom and brings an interest in how animals experience the world.
"My research explores how invertebrates, with small and supposedly simple brains, generate some astonishingly complex patterns of behaviour," explains Barron. "I have focused on the honey bee, which lives in one of the most complex animal societies, and yet each bee's brain measures little more than 1 mm3."
Part of Barron's research is behavioural and the other half is molecular and neuro biological. "This is the only place in Australia and one of few in the world where you can do my kind of research which is a hybrid of lab and field work," says Barron. "On-site I have a large bee yard, flight arenas and bee houses and a new state-of-the-art molecular biology lab will soon be built here."
The honey bee
Barron focuses particularly on the honey bee because it is the only animal that has incredibly complicated behaviour which is simple to study.
"It is easy to look at the neurons of a honey bee as they don't have all that many and they also have a fully sequenced genome so the capacity for molecular biology and analysis is much greater than any other animal," he says.
Currently Barron is looking at how animals process reward.
"Basically most human behaviour is driven by a reward-seeking motivation," he says. "Sex, money, and food feeds into this same motivational axis - which is basically go and get your reward. You then get your pleasurable sensation having received the reward which gives the motivation to go and do it again."
The life of a honey bee is all about gathering rewards for their colony and their society and Barron is trying to establish the nature of their reward-seeking motivation, which is remarkably similar to that of a human. He is asking questions like: how is the altruism of bees wired to the brain? what do bees find rewarding as they are really working themselves to death? are bees motivated by working for someone else?
Postgraduate opportunities
Barron is already taking on two postgraduate students in 2008 and is keen to take on more. If you have a passion for animal behaviour, are not scared of bees and are interested in the hybrid of working in a laboratory and in the field he would love to hear from you.
For further information visit the CISAB website
or contact Dr Andrew Barron andrew.barron@mq.edu.au