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Dr DAVID LUSSEAU

Lecturer in marine populations

 

Personal Details

Telephone:

+44 (0)1224 272843

E-mail:

d.lusseau@abdn.ac.uk

Personal website:


Address:

Zoology Building - Room 415
Tel.: +44 (0) 1224 27 2843

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Web Links

check out our MSc/MRes/PgDip in 

Applied Marine and Fisheries Ecology- Concepts and Practices for Ecosystem-based Management (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/fisheco)

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Biography

  • Lecturer in marine populations, University of Aberdeen, UK, 2007-2010

  • Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellow, Dalhousie University, Canada, 2006-2007

  • Research Fellow, University of Aberdeen, UK, 2003-2005

  • PhD in Zoology, University of Otago, New Zealand, 2003

  • Bsc in Marine Biology, Florida Institute of Technology, USA, 1996

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Research Interests

I am focussing my research on understanding how the behaviour of individuals influences the dynamics of their populations. I am particularly interested in applying this research to further our knowledge of the population-level consequences of disturbances on individuals. I also focus on social interactions in animal populations trying to understand how environmental variability, both natural and anthropogenic, influences them.

Keywords:

Socioecology - Conservation ecology - Behavioural Ecology - Conservation behaviour

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Current Research


  • All things networked:
We are working on developing models of network evolution and network dynamics inspired from empirical studies.


  • The influence of sociality on decision-making processes:
We are investigating how variation in social structure influences the way in which groups of animals make decisions about their movement and their behavioural budget and how these decision-making processes influences the fitness of individuals.


  • Of social roles:
Emerging network analytical techniques allows us to understand the relative social position of individuals in their populations. We are using empirical studies to test whether these positions affect the influence individuals can have on the fitness of their conspecifics.


  • The population-level consequences of human disturbances:
A consensus is emerging that wildlife manages non-lethal interactions with humans in the same manner as these species manage predation risk. We study these management strategies and the consequences cumulative exposure to disturbance has on the fitness of individuals and the resulting viability of their populations.


SOCPROG (Programs for the analysis of animal social structure) is available here: SOCPROG 2.3


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Collaborations

Hal Whitehead (socioecology and network analyses); Lars Bejder (whalewatching disturbance); Rob Williams (whalewatching disturbance, killer whale socioecology); Louise Barrett and Peter Henzi (baboon socioecology); James Higham (tourism management); Paul Thompson, Steve Dawson and Liz Slooten (bottlenose dolphin socioecology and conservation ecology)

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Research Grants

  • College of Life Sciences and Medicine Equipment Grant 2008 (with B.E. Scott and P.M. Thompson): £21,500
  • Moray Firth Partnership: Economic Value of the Moray Firth Bottlenose Dolphins,2009, (co-I; PI: Ben Davies): £17,000

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Teaching Responsibilities

  • MSc/MRes/PgDip in Applied Marine and Fisheries Ecology (coordinator)

  • BI 20Z1 - Vertebrate Zoology (lecture)

  • ZO 3507 - Animal Behaviour (lecture)

  • ZO 4527 - Wildlife Management (lecture)

  • ZO 4518 - Marine and Fisheries Biology (lecture)

  • ZO 4535 - Advances in Behavioural Ecology (lecture)

  • BI 5009 - Experimental Design and Analysis (coordinate and lecture)
  • BI 5010 - Statistics for complex designs (coordinate and lecture)
  • ZO 5903 - Network Science (coordinate and lecture)

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External Responsibilities

Editor for PLoS ONE (2006-2009)

Editor for Animal Behaviour (2010-2013)

Member of the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee

Chair of the International Whaling Commission Intersessional Steering Group on the whalewatching large-scale study LaWE

Member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Cetacean Specialist Group

Member of the Eastern Taiwan Strait Sousa Technical Advisory Working Group 

Member of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour

Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society

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Current students

Fredrik Christiansen (2009-2012): Whaling-whalewatching interactions in Iceland

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Past students

Nicholas Riddoch The effect of social behaviour on habitat use; a study of bottlenose dolphins. MRes in Applied Marine and Fisheries Ecology (graduated 2009)

Lucine Edwards: Informing fisheries management given uncertainty and resource constraints: the Barrouallie blackfish fishery, St.Vincent and the Grenadines. MRes in Applied Marine and Fisheries Ecology (graduated 2009 with commendation)

Andrea Powell: The foraging ecology of bottlenose dolphins in Aberdeen harbour. MSc in Marine and Fisheries Science (graduated 2008 with Distinction)

Anna Baldock: The effects of boat traffic on the foraging behaviour of the bottlenose dolphin. MSc in Marine and Fisheries Science (graduated 2008)

Benjamin Wambergue: Evaluating the surfacing patterns of bottlenose dolphins in relation to their behaviour and boat traffic. MRes in Ecology (graduated 2008)

Kelly Ann Dempsey:  The ecology of bottlenose dolphins in the South Esk estuary. Honours in Wildlife Management



 

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Selected Publications


  • Lusseau D. & Conradt L. 2009. The emergence of unshared consensus decisions in bottlenose dolphins. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 63(7): 1067-1077. [ArXiv]

  • Henzi S.P., Lusseau D., Weingrill T., van Schaik C.P. & Barrett L. 2009. Cyclicity in the structure of female baboon social networks. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology  63(7): 1015-1021.

  • Lusseau D., Bain D.E., Williams R. & Smith J.C. 2009. Vessel traffic disrupts the foraging behavior of southern resident killer whales (Orcinus orca). Endangered Species Research 6:211-221. [open access]

  • Lusseau D., Whitehead H. & Gero S. 2008. Applying network methods to the study of animal social structures. Animal Behaviour 75: 1809-1815. [pdf]

  • Marino L., Allman J., Connor R.C., Fordyce E., Herman L.M., Hof P.R., Lefebvre L., Lusseau D., McCowan B., Nimchinsky E.A., Pack A.A., Rendell L., Reidenberg J.M., Reiss D., Uhen M.D., Van der Gucht E., Whitehead H. 2007. Cetaceans have complex brains for complex cognition. PLoS Biology 5(5): e139. [html] [pdf]

  • Guimarães Jr. P.R., de Menezes M.A., Baird R.W., Lusseau D., Guimarães P. & dos Reis S.F. 2007. Vulnerability of a killer whale social network to disease outbreaks. Physics Review E 76(4): art. 042901.

  • Lusseau D. 2007. Why are male social relationships complex in the Doubtful Sound bottlenose dolphin population? PLoS ONE 2(4): e348. [html]

  • Lusseau D. 2007. Evidence for social role in a dolphin social network. Evolutionary Ecology 21(3): 357-366. [ArXiv]

  • Higham J.E.S. & Lusseau D. 2007. Whalewatching and whaling: An urgent need for empirical research. Conservation Biology 21(2): 554-558. 

  • Williams R. & Lusseau D. 2006. Killer whale social networks can be vulnerable to targeted removals. Biology Letters 2(4): 497-500. 

  • Lusseau D., Wilson B., Grellier K., Hammond P.S., Durban J.W., Parsons K.M., Barton T.M. & Thompson P.M. 2006. Quantifying the influence of sociality on population structure in bottlenose dolphins. Journal of Animal Ecology 75(1): 14-24 

  • Lusseau D., Williams R., Wilson B., Grellier K., Barton T.R., Hammond P.S. & Thompson P.M. 2004. Parallel influence of climate on the behaviour of Pacific killer whales and Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. Ecology Letters 7: 1068-1076.

  • Lusseau D. & Newman M.E.J. 2004. Identifying the role that animals play in their social networks. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 271 S6: S477-S481. [ArXiv]

  • Lusseau D. 2004. The hidden cost of tourism: Effects of interactions with tour boats on the behavioural budget of two populations of bottlenose dolphins in Fiordland, New Zealand. Ecology and Society 9(1): art. 2 [html]

  • Lusseau D. 2003. The emergent properties of a dolphin social network. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 270 S1: S186-S188. [ArXiv]

  • Lusseau D., Schneider K., Boisseau O.J., Haase P., Slooten E. & Dawson S.M. 2003. The bottlenose dolphin community of Doubtful Sound features a large proportion of long-lasting associations. Can geographic isolation explain this unique trait? Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 54(4): 396-405.

  • Lusseau D. 2003. The effects of tour boats on the behavior of bottlenose dolphins: Using Markov chains to model anthropogenic impacts. Conservation Biology 17(6): 1785-1793.


complete list of publications (January 2009) here

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