Dr Swidbert R. Ott

Biography

Lecturer in Animal Biology

Research Interest

I am interested in how the behaviour of an animal is shaped by the interactions between its evolutionary history, its individual history (past experience), and the present environment that it finds itself in. Some major themes in my current work are what molecular, neuronal and neurochemical mechanisms mediate phenotypic plasticity of behaviour how the capacity for behavioural plasticity is itself plastic, and modified by experience, on the phylogenetic and ontogenetic scale how simple mechanistic rules and environmental feedback mechanisms facilitate the coordination of adaptive behaviour what changes in brain structure underpin adaptive behavioural changes