Research Technician
Currently I am a research technician with the Troscianko Lab, working as part of Dr. Emmanuelle Briolat’s NERC fellowship looking at light pollution and its impact on night flying moth behaviour. My personal research interests include the impact of anthropogenic stressors on animal visual ecology and camouflage, especially as it relates to plasticity in camouflage any mitigation it can provide.
Publications
Galloway, J.A.M.*, Green, S.D.*, Stevens, M. & Kelley, L.A. Finding a hidden signal among noise: how can predators overcome camouflage strategies? Phil Trans B, (2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0478. *Shared primary authorship.
PhD Thesis
I completed my PhD with Martin Stevens in 2022. My PhD thesis aimed to examine the role of vision in animals capable of colour change, and how this ability to change colour aids in camouflage. I specifically looked at the role vision plays in allowing animals capable of colour change to match their background, focussing on crabs and chameleon prawns. This research examined how animals capable of changing colour use it to adapt to environmental variation, not just the visual difference in backgrounds, but to changes in light conditions as well. Key highlights include the apparent lack of any reversible chromatic change ability in Carcinus maenas, as well as the ability to adjust apparently disruptive patterning by changing contrast between apparently fixed pattern elements allowing a shift between uniform and patterned coloration.
MSc Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology, 2016 – 2017
In September 2016 I started an MSc in Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology at the University of Exeter. My research project was with the Sensory Ecology lab, and used Hippolyte varians, the chameleon prawn, and rock gobies to directly examine the effectiveness of camouflage (specifically background matching) as an antipredator defence. This research involved the creation of artificial rockpools with one colour of seaweed, and prawns that both matched and didn’t match the seaweed to see if those that matched had a survival advantage.
Contacts:
Personal website: www.jimgalloway.co.uk
Twitter: @JimAMclGalloway
