Pierre-Paul Bitton - PI
Like many other scientists I'm a bit of a intellectual scatterbrain, I am always amazed at the complexity and elegance of nature. I decided to study visual communication when I first learned that many other animals can see in the UV.

Current lab members

Juan Pablo Ibañez - CABE MSc
Joining the lab in September 2019, Juan hails from Colombia. He will be experimentally determining if the daytime eyeshine produced by scorpionfish, which is a mechanism to camouflage what would be a conspicuous black pupil, incurs a cost to spatial vision or contrast sensitivity. His work will take him to Germany and Corsica for data collection! 

Amy Wilson - CABE MSc
Bringing 10 years of field work experience with birds to our team, Amy is a smart addition. She will be lead our research efforts on Gull Island studying social communication in Atlantic puffins

Robert Blackmore - CABE MSc
Is this green light grabbing your attention? Robert, co-supervised with Bill Montevecchi, is looking at ways of increasing cod handline fishing rates by attracting them with green LED lights. His preliminary trials, so far, have been very encouraging.

Noah O'Brien - Psychology BSc Honours
Noah has been waiting a long time to get his hands on a puffin. We'll give him his chance! Noah is quantifying the light environment inside Atlantic puffin burrows as a first step towards understanding the visual world of their nestlings. 

Aime Hirwa - Psychology BSc Honours
Did you find that moth? Aime is trailblazing a new research avenue in our lab by using eye-tracking software to determine how humans search a scene to find a camouflaged object. We are collaborating with Drs Fawcett (MUN Psychology) and Troscianko (Exeter). 

Sylvia Farooq BSc Psychology
Do these mates look the same? Using our first 2 years of Atlantic puffin measurements and pictures, Sylvia is determining if puffins mate assortatively.

Raul Zabala - MSc CABE
After spending 2 years as a research assistant studying Atlantic puffins in Iceland, Raul joined us to see if they look the same on the other side of the Atlantic. He will be developing an Atlantic puffin productivity monitoring program for Newfoundland, and try to determine why pufflings are attracted to light when fledging.

Katja Kochvar - MSC CABE
Straight out of Nowicki's lab, Katja has something for animal communication. We'll make sure she gets her fix by determining if bill colouration in Atlantic puffins mediates interactions between mated individuals.

Previous lab members

Rabeya Akhter - Comp Sci MSc
Rabeya completed her Msc in August 2020. Co-supervised by Adrian Fiech from the Department of Computer Sciences, she developed the prototype of an open-access digital repository of spectral data which should launch as in beta form early in 2021. This repository has for ambition to store objectively measured colours from as many animals as possible.  

April Griffin - WISE 2019
A WISE student indeed! April joined the lab during the summer of 2019 for an internship through the Women In Science and Engineering program. She spent much of her summer helping out with our puffin project in the field and in the lab.  She is currently completing high school while deciding  where life will take her next.

 Derek Wadley - Volunteer 2019
It's a long way from Kansas! A first year BSc student, Derek had a strong urge to work with seabirds but could not find any in his hometown of Kansas City.  So Newfoundland was an obvious choice. An unwearying field worker, he spent the summer of 2019 handling puffins and storm-petrels on Gull Island in Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. He is currently pursuing his studies in Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology. 

Julie Goudie - Psychology Honours BSc 2019
A Psychology major studying fish? Why not! Trailblazing new procedures in our lab, Julie produced the first retinal map of the black scorpionfish for her BSc Honours research project. She found that photoreceptors are denser both in the periphery of the retina and as a horizontal streak, which aligns well with its predatory crypto-benthic lifestyle.