More on social conformity here:
Conformity and differentiation are two sides of the same coin
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
with @katelaskowski.bsky.social

Huge thanks to
@mollyaclark.bsky.social & Ella Waples for their help in those early fish-lab pandemic days,
‪@iplanass.bsky.social for python support‬‬,
Jo Attwell who introduced me to the Optical Flow() in Matlab, saving this project when it looked doomed!
And ofc ~800 🐟 who made it all possible!

Using this new tool gave us objective movement data we hope to, one day, align with real predators vision models 👀
8/9

It was great fun to apply optical flow analysis to this experiment. An interesting challenge for me to try this new approach, after years of tracking fish movement from above or manually scoring behaviours.
see here👇 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.... & www.nature.com/articles/s42...
7/9

Why does it matter? Natural systems are changing rapidly under a concerto of multiple stressors. This type of experiment can help us tease apart complex and sometimes counterintuitive responses, bringing us closer to understanding real-life ecological dynamics between species & their environment
6/9

There was no ⚡ between 🌡️ & 🌫️: temp dominated the magnitude response, while turb dominated the duration/No. of events. But together? A cumulative antagonistic effect emerges:
Turbidity makes guppies harder to find…
…but if spotted in warm water, they’re more conspicuous = acute predation risk!
5/9

🌡️Higher temperature = higher mean magnitude = more conspicuous guppies.
They swam faster & were more active, so easier to spot when in view!
🌫️Turbidity reduced the frequency of detection, and the duration of the “interaction” (ie time 🐟 were visible).
4/9