- Joined
- Mar 30, 2011
- Messages
- 6
Hi!
I'm currently a 5th year undergrad on the northwest coast of California. I've been in love with cephalopods for many years now, and I've kept saltwater tanks for about 2-3 years. As my time at university draws to a close, I have to choose a project and write a thesis... after much consideration, I've decided I want to do some behavioral research on S. bandensis. My school has an amazing marine lab facility, and keeping multiple cuttlefish should be no problem--we even have a resident cephalopod expert on the tech staff. My problem is coming up with something unique and relevant that can be done with the facilities we have.
I chose S. bandensis rather than S. officinalis even though it's probable that the university has the ability to obtain S. officinalis because they're smaller and thus easier to keep multiples, easier to get (my LFS can get me 20 eggs at a time if I really wanted and could keep them), have more "personality" (I think? I get this from anecdotal evidence!), but most importantly--NOTHING has been done as far as research on this species. I don't know why. Does anyone have any knowledge about this? My theory is just that it's a precedence thing--everyone uses S. officinalis for research, so they just keep using it because it's available.
Anyway, lots of research has been done on spatial learning, habituation, and Pavlovian associative learning, but very little operant conditioning with positive food-based reinforcement. I've studied a bit on clicker-training ("clicker" is a misnomer--a visual stimulus could be used as a "click"), and I've seen it successful with fish and reptiles. Have any of you tried to train your cuttlefish? Were you successful? My idea is to train a behavior, then let it extinguish (and see how long it takes to extinguish), then train the same behavior again and see if the cuttle picks it up faster the second time. However, to train them I need to provide them with good (read: "delicious") incentive and tap into a behavior they might naturally do in the wild.
I've got tons of ideas, but also tons of questions, and tons of worries, like making things too complicated or doing something that's already been done. I want this study to be as amazing as it can possibly be--published in a peer-reviewed journal would be the ultimate! I know folks at TONMO have misgivings about research done by the average layperson, but rest assured my study will be official, complete with a submitted proposal, thought to the care of the animals, supervision by professors, adequate facilities, etc. The design process alone will be several months in the making.
So my question to all of you is... do you have any other ideas? Does this sound like a good study to you? Is it scientifically relevant? I've already exhausted the published literature on cuttlefish behavior, but is there somewhere else you might want to point me towards? I've been told to try to contact Roger Hanlon at Woods Hole, MA, but he's one of the godfathers of cephalopod research... contacting him with my petty undergraduate questions is very, very intimidating...
That was a long introduction post. I am sorry! I hope to make some friends at TONMO and expand my knowledge of cephs... eventually I will have some of my own
friendofgum
I'm currently a 5th year undergrad on the northwest coast of California. I've been in love with cephalopods for many years now, and I've kept saltwater tanks for about 2-3 years. As my time at university draws to a close, I have to choose a project and write a thesis... after much consideration, I've decided I want to do some behavioral research on S. bandensis. My school has an amazing marine lab facility, and keeping multiple cuttlefish should be no problem--we even have a resident cephalopod expert on the tech staff. My problem is coming up with something unique and relevant that can be done with the facilities we have.
I chose S. bandensis rather than S. officinalis even though it's probable that the university has the ability to obtain S. officinalis because they're smaller and thus easier to keep multiples, easier to get (my LFS can get me 20 eggs at a time if I really wanted and could keep them), have more "personality" (I think? I get this from anecdotal evidence!), but most importantly--NOTHING has been done as far as research on this species. I don't know why. Does anyone have any knowledge about this? My theory is just that it's a precedence thing--everyone uses S. officinalis for research, so they just keep using it because it's available.
Anyway, lots of research has been done on spatial learning, habituation, and Pavlovian associative learning, but very little operant conditioning with positive food-based reinforcement. I've studied a bit on clicker-training ("clicker" is a misnomer--a visual stimulus could be used as a "click"), and I've seen it successful with fish and reptiles. Have any of you tried to train your cuttlefish? Were you successful? My idea is to train a behavior, then let it extinguish (and see how long it takes to extinguish), then train the same behavior again and see if the cuttle picks it up faster the second time. However, to train them I need to provide them with good (read: "delicious") incentive and tap into a behavior they might naturally do in the wild.
I've got tons of ideas, but also tons of questions, and tons of worries, like making things too complicated or doing something that's already been done. I want this study to be as amazing as it can possibly be--published in a peer-reviewed journal would be the ultimate! I know folks at TONMO have misgivings about research done by the average layperson, but rest assured my study will be official, complete with a submitted proposal, thought to the care of the animals, supervision by professors, adequate facilities, etc. The design process alone will be several months in the making.
So my question to all of you is... do you have any other ideas? Does this sound like a good study to you? Is it scientifically relevant? I've already exhausted the published literature on cuttlefish behavior, but is there somewhere else you might want to point me towards? I've been told to try to contact Roger Hanlon at Woods Hole, MA, but he's one of the godfathers of cephalopod research... contacting him with my petty undergraduate questions is very, very intimidating...
That was a long introduction post. I am sorry! I hope to make some friends at TONMO and expand my knowledge of cephs... eventually I will have some of my own
friendofgum