Sean A. Rands

Abstract Group living can make animals more resilient or more susceptible to human-induced rapid environmental change, and whether animals demonstrate plasticity in their collective behaviour to mitigate the effects of environmental change is unknown. Freshwater and coastal habitats are becoming increasingly turbid as a result of human activity, which limits the availability of information and hence responses to critical stimuli such as food and predators.

Abstract The group vigilance hypothesis suggests animals within a group have a lower overall vigilance level than solitary individuals due to the collective responsibility of predator detection. Previous methods of studying vigilance have used head position as a proxy to indicate a state of vigilance, but it has been suggested that this method is too ambiguous, and the observer cannot accurately ascertain the exact behavioural state of the focal animal.

Abstract Flowers have long been suggested to be infection hotspots for pollinator diseases, as, during their brief lifespan, they are visited and handled by many individuals from a diverse range of species. Evidence that floral hotspots are an important point of contagion is building, but few models currently allow us to characterise these novel plant-pathogen-pollinator systems where horizontal infections occur from concentrated, short-lived sites of contagion.