Hello, my name is Josh Le Pla, and I’m just starting the first year of my PhD with QUADRAT at Queens University Belfast. Growing up in the countryside, I always held an interest in the natural world and the animals within it, learning about how the ecosystem is intricately linked together in a million different ways. My love for animals only grew while spending my weekends working with horses, which was made a lot more entertaining by all of their unique (and sometimes troublesome) personalities. Despite having no experience with the sea prior, I was eventually led to studying at Plymouth in Marine Biology, where I could delve into an environment I knew absolutely nothing about, to ask more questions and hopefully figure out more answers.
It was at Plymouth that my fascination in animal behaviour really took root, which culminated in my Masters thesis focusing on fighting behaviour in hermit crabs. The conflict seen between rivals is one of the most influential interactions seen in the animal kingdom, and it is the need to defeat one’s opponents that drives the evolution of many of the most characteristic traits we see in nature. Whether it’s the long necks of giraffes, huge antlers of deer, or greatly disproportionate claws of fiddler crabs, an evolutionary arms race is still happening, with each individual attempting to be and breed the best fighters. Our understanding of these conflicts is critical to building a comprehensive knowledge of the workings of the natural world, as these conflicts are what shape and influence animals for their entire lives.
My PhD will focus on a small, but perhaps incredibly influential component of contests known as bystander behaviour. With the aim of fighting being
to learn as much about an opponent’s fighting ability as quickly as possible, a smart individual might gain a lot by simply sitting back and watching his rivals wear each other out and demonstrate how strong they are, without needing to waste his own energy or risk injury. Fallow deer, which live in large herds and fight brutally for status, are an ideal model for testing the significance of this behaviour. While it might seem a big jump from hermit crabs (and they’re definitely a lot bigger), the factors that separate the winners from the losers are near universal, something I even see in my free time while training in martial arts.
