Abstract

Navigation, or the ability to accurately and efficiently determine one’s position relative to a goal, underpins many important behaviours. For aquatic animals, visually-guided navigation underwater comes with particular challenges. In addition to an extended range of movement along both the vertical and horizontal axes compared to most terrestrial animals, the appearance of visual cues can change rapidly due to the behaviour of light in water (e.g. attenuation, wave-induced flicker, low-light), reducing the accuracy of landmark identification. In this talk, I will discuss what we can learn from laboratory experiments about the mechanism of visual navigation, including object recognition, distance estimation, and route planning. I will also explore how we can use recent advances in computer vision and photogrammetry to understand the navigation behaviour of wild fish moving within their complex natural environments.