(BBSRC DTP) How substrates affect animal locomotion: from polar bears to sea turtles

The way animals move is of fundamental biological importance. However, much remains to be determined about the actual mechanisms involved. Interest in animal gait can be traced back to the origins of dressage in the 16th Century. There are, however, still comparatively few studies on factors that influenced movement, in particular those that study free-moving animals in the wild. Terrestrial animals must successfully (in terms of minimising the associated energetic costs and reducing the chance of injury) locomote over a wide variety of different substrates such as grassland, rocks, mud and snow during their lifetime. This project will focus on how differences in the physical properties of substrates influence the way animals move and specifically why they chose to move over different surfaces. The project will focus on polar mammals and birds, and sea turtles, because of specialisations in their locomotion and the specific constraints they face in terms of environmental change; be that the reduction of polar ice, the influence of difference in sea levels and changing beach topography. We will use a combination of kinematic techniques, biologging tags and lab-field based energetics linked to mechanical measures of substrate properties throughout this project.