Innes Cuthill

Innes C. Cuthill(born 1960) is a professor ofbehavioural ecologyat theUniversity of Bristol.His main research interest is incamouflage,in particular how it evolves in response to thecolour visionof other animals such aspredators.

Life

Cuthill was educated atUniversity College School,London. He read zoology at theUniversity of Cambridge,graduating in 1982 and gained his D.Phil. at theUniversity of Oxfordin 1985. He worked at Oxford until 1989 when he became a lecturer at theUniversity of Bristol.He became a professor there in 1998 and was head of the School of Biological Sciences from 2008 to 2012.

Work

Cuthill describes himself as "wear[ing] two hats,behavioural ecologistandsensory ecologist",unified by seeking to explain the "design, throughnatural selection,of animal form and function. "He states that his main research interest is theevolutionofcamouflageof one kind of animal, such as prey, in response to the colour vision of another kind of animal, such as apredator.

He has contributed to over 180 research papers, mainly on vision andcamouflage,though he has also written on the use of statistics in biology, cited over 1600 times,and on guidelines for reporting the use of animals in research, cited over 2000 times.

Awards and distinctions

Cuthill won the Scientific Medal of theZoological Society of Londonin 1998, and theNatureandNESTAaward for mentoring in science in 2005. From 2007 to 2010 he was president of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.He gave theTinbergen Lectureof 2014and won the 2018 ASAB medal for contributions to the science of animal behaviour.