Raúl got 18 in his thesis within the Biostatistics Master! 

Great job Raúl! We are proud of you! 

Thesis title: Using supervised machine learning to quantify cleaning behaviour

We found that hypoxia yielded lower survival rates, smaller body sizes and inhibited predatory (increased latency to attack the prey) and anti-predator (camouflage) behaviours. Acute and chronic exposure to low oxygen produced similar effects on cognition (inability to socially learn, increased open-field activity levels, no changes in thigmotaxis). Congrats Melanie et al!

Our team is organising the 21th Congress of the Portuguese Ethological Society to be held in Lisbon on 5, 6 and 7 December, in partnership with MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa and FLAD - Luso-American Development Foundation. 

Dr. Catherine Sheppard just started in the Lab within ChangingMoods project! Cat comes from the UK and did a PhD at The University of Lancaster. Cat started doing fieldwork with Hawaiian cleaner wrasses earlier this month, and she's already a successful fish catcher! We are super excited to have you in the lab!

Congratulations to Maddalena and Tânia for securing competitive PhD fellowships with FCT! Amazing work! Looking forward for the next 4 years! 

Congrats Maddalena et al! 

In our new study we demonstrate that cleaner gobies, Elacatinus oceanops, exhibit cue-based decision-making, particularly when prioritizing larger plates, mirroring their natural tendency to prioritize larger predatory clients, emphasizing the need for further research on their cognition in various ecological contexts. Check it out here. 

FLAD media team visited MARE/Ciências ULisboa - Laboratório Maritimo da Guia to record a promo video for the AtlanticDiversa project! I think it looks great! Have a look here (in Portuguese).

Dr. Jade Sourisse just started in the Lab as a Post-doc under the project AtlanticDiversa! Jade comes from France and did a PhD at The University of Hong Kong. We are super excited to have you in the lab!

José was working with Ivan Nagelkerken, David Booth, Gigi Beretta and Angus Mitchel on cleaner wrasses expanding to temperate waters around Sydney. Thank you for hosting me, such a fun trip!

She will be representing our team and present her work on cleaner wrasse behaviour under climate change stressors  🐟🐠!

Thank you for the support!  🐟🐠

 Would you like to live in sunny Lisbon? We are looking for a 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐝𝐨𝐜 to join the team and work with 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐫 starting in October/November on a one-year fellowship (with the possibility of extensions). Email jrpaula [at] ciencias.ulisboa.pt for more information!

José Ricardo Paula was distinguished with the 4th edition of the Science Award Atlantic attributed by the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD). José received from His Excellency the President of the Portuguese Republic, Prof. Dr. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. The award provides 300.000 euros in funding in three years to develop a project that aims to improve the understanding of the role of cleaning mutualisms in the conservation of biodiversity, using emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

It was great to set new collaborations and to meet some old friends.

Congrats Beatriz Pereira, Simon et al! Here we found that transgenerational exposure to reduced oxygen and elevated temperature negatively affects amphipod survival and male mating behaviours, but evidence of adaptation and carry-over effects were observed. Check it out!

Congratulations Beatriz! Great job everyone!

It was great to see old friends and make new collaborations! Great talks everyone!

Neuromolecular responses in disrupted mutualistic cleaning interactions under future environmental conditions, with Dr. Celia Schunter Lab from HKU. Check it out here.

Gene losses, parallel evolution and heightened expression confer adaptations to dedicated cleaning behaviour, with Dr. Celia Schunter Lab from HKU. Check it out here!

She got 18/20! Great job Tânia! 

Thesis title: 

The hidden burden of sociality: Effects of simulated infections on social distancing within cleaning interactions 

Thanks Lexa and Mark for having us! Check out a short video about it here. 

Congrats Melanie, Marta and Maddalena et al for such a cool manuscript! Check it out here.

This was part of a Research Topic edited by José Ricardo Paula, Xiaodan Wang, Chang Xu and Daniel C. Moreira. Check it out!

There's always reasons to celebrate, but after a hardworking month with proposal applications, experiments and writing - the lab deserved some great dim sum! Best of luck for Maddalena and Melanie on their proposals!! 🤞🏻

She got 18/20! Great job Marta! 

Thesis title: 

Impacts of ocean deoxygenation and hypoxia in the physiology and behaviour of cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis)

Check it out! Thank you so much Maria :)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boa8z6JvJV8 

José will be managing the BEE group remotely in 2023, while he is hosted by Elizabeth Madin lab at Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology within the project ChangingMoods. His stay will be supported by FLAD R&D@USA and FCT.

Maria Pinto, a well-known sci-comm YouTuber, visited us to film an episode on fish intelligence! Stay tuned. https://www.youtube.com/@Seamemaria 

We celebrated our work throughout the year in a specially-themed lab meeting - our Italian team members taught us the skills of doing a great Pizza! (... and Beatriz started a pizza dough fight)

José Ricardo Paula and Raúl Oliveira just published in Animal Behaviour! The fieldwork was done in Moorea with Suzie Mills and Rui Rosa during José PhD at Rui Rosa Lab. Raúl Oliveira joined efforts at a later stage to perform an interobserver analysis test. 

Check it out at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.11.003 

For our experiments, we needed to get our heads underwater and collect some parasites! Beatriz, Daniele, and Jose drove to the south of Portugal to set up some zooplankton emergence traps with the help of AIMM-Portugal. Thanks Joana and André!