THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL ECOLOGY OF VISION RESEARCH GROUP
We are an internationally leading grouping of vision research labs. Our research focuses on visually guided behaviours, the use of visual information, the evolution of the visual system and photopigments and the impacts of artificial light at night. We study how animal vision functions across a wide range of species, including crustaceans, insects, spiders, fish and cephalopods. A particular strength of the group is discovering new optical principles behind ways animals manipulate light and understanding how and why vision and animal optics have evolved.
Our research group consists of a mix of biologists, physicists and engineers. This allows us to successfully follow cross-disciplinary approaches in our research. A full list of current group members can be found here.
New Papers from the group:
McAndrew, R., Daly, I.M., Roberts, N.W., How, M. and Meah, R.J. 2026. Duration of nocturnal artificial light and refuge-seeking behaviour in the shore crab Carcinus maenas Linnaeus, 1758 (Decapoda: Brachyura: Carcinidae). Journal of Crustacean Biology, 46(3), p.ruag063.
Daniel, M.M., Santon, M., Narendra, A. and How, M.J. 2026. Tracking animal routes in 3D space through reconstructed habitats from dynamic videos. bioRxiv, pp.2026-07. doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.07.22.740183
Lucas, R.J., Brown, T.M., Brainard, G., Didikoglu, A., Dominoni, D.M., Franklin, K.A., Gaston, K.J., Hegemann, P., Hölker, F., Jechow, A., Knopp, E., Kyba, C.M., Longcore, T., Maggi, E., Nilsson, D-E., Obein, G., Roberts, N. W., Seymoure, B., Spoelstra, K., Thorns, P. and Hut, R.A. 2026. Biological Spectral Sensitivity Functions for Measuring and Managing Light at Night https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202604.1368 DOI: 10.20944/preprints202604.1368.v1
Mano, T., Tsaridis, K., Kojima, Y., Masucci, G.D., Dinh, T.T.V., Tong, R., Glykos, V., Dolezalova, L., Asada, K., Shumkova, D. and Rogers, L., Hamon, M., Santon, M., Hiroi, M., Iglesias, T.L., Bellono, N.W., How, M.J., Goda, Y., Meshulam, L. and Reiter, S. 2026. Hierarchical processing and polarization encoding in the cephalopod visual system. bioRxiv, pp.2026-01 - doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.08.698312
Meah, R.J., Sumner-Rooney, L., Vincent Venables, S., Lloyd-How, S.T., Massy, R., Hawkes, W.L.S., Daly, I.M., Smithers, S.P., Wotton, K.R., and Roberts, N.W. 2025. Light pollution creates multiple threats to the movement ecology of nocturnal arthropod taxa. Current Biology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.11.055.
Recent Papers from the group:
Field Work Sites where we do research:
Much of the research work we undertake is experimental field work. We use field sites in the Pyrenees, Spain, Panama and the coral reefs off Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The video below shows us heading out to Horseshoe Reef just off Lizard Island where we were setting up remote polarization cameras.
