Research Group Leads: Professor Mark Briffa and Dr Sarah Collins 

We explore animal behaviour across the animal kingdom, while aiming to apply this knowledge to improving animal welfare and conservation and understanding their relationships with humans and the natural world. 

Our research interests fall into two key themes, Behavioural Ecology and Applied Ethology. Our Behavioural Ecology research addresses questions about the functions of behaviour, and we have particular interests in animal contests, animal personality, animal communication, social networks, sexual selection, alternative reproductive tactics (ARTS).

In our Applied Ethology research we study human impacts on wild animal behaviour, welfare in captive animals, and the links between behaviour and conservation. Taken together our interests encompass work on diverse animal taxa, including cnidarians, arthropods and vertebrates – from freshwater, marine and terrestrial habitats, which we study in the lab, in zoos, aquaria and farms, and in the wild.