PROF. LEWIS HALSEY

My present research quantifies the energetic costs for species in situations where energy expenditure can be high or highly variable. This line of enquiry is motivated by the theory that greater energy costs for an animal can have detrimental consequences for its reproductive success. I am therefore interested both in how animals are adapted to reduce energy costs to tenable levels, and the effects on reproductive fitness of fluctuations in an animal’s energy costs. For example, I study the energy costs of arboreal locomotion in great apes and how they utilise the inherent elasticity in their environment to their energetic advantage. I also study how perturbations to the environment affect the foraging energy efficiency of seabirds from the UK to the tropics to the sub Antarctic, and in turn how this affects chick rearing during the breeding season. To support these research endeavours, I continue to be at the forefront of the development, validation and application of the accelerometry technique for estimating energy expenditure in the field.