Seeing is Believing: Patterns and Processes in Camouflauge and Climate Change

Extreme heatwaves hitting both land and sea at the same time are becoming more common. In Australia, heatwaves are more likely to occur when there's a heatwave in the surrounding ocean. This research helps us better understand how these events happen and prepare for future extreme weather events.

Charuni Pathmeswaran is pursuing a PhD in climate science. She analyses large climate datasets to identify links between heatwaves on land and in the ocean. She enjoys making complex scientific concepts accessible and has been awarded the Climate Change Research Centre Prize for Sci Comm

How does movement affect our perception of animal colour patterns? Flashing especially renders signals more conspicuous, but also has potential to delude the viewer on target location. Here, we tap into dynamic visual signals.

Sanni Silvastri is a PhD candidate researching moving, flashing, and iridescent visual signals in animals. She uses birds and butterflies to study how perception changes with moving and flashing, and what is the evolutionary consequence to signal appearances.