Emeritus ProfessorJohn Endler

The interaction between sensory systems, signals, and the environment, and using these interactions to predict the direction of evolution under known environmental conditions.

My main projects involve involve a mixture of field work, field experiments, lab experiments, and modelling all to do with animal behaviour in relation to sensory ecology and evolution. Most of my work has dealt with the joint effects of colour vision, colour signals and animal behaviour..

I am unable to take PhD or other students because I'm retired. However if another professor could be the formal supervisor that could work.
I'm always happy to have PhD students with similar interests,

My main research is on Signal design and its relationship to the environment and geometry in Bowerbirds. But I have and am working on a variety of other vertebrates and invertebrates. Questions include: Just how does the complex geometry and resulting multiple visual tricks and illusions created by great bowerbirds effect mating success and how and why do they repair problems in their bower geometry so quickly? What insights can these birds and their bowers give us about how animals perceive the world and act upon sensory information--true or misleading?

Knowledge Areas
Evolutionary Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Sensory Ecology, Behavioural Ecology. The interaction between sensory systems, signals, the environment, and how this can be used to predict the direction of evolution.