The Oxford Navigation Group
Anna Garcia
she/her
DPhil Candidate
Supervised by Prof. Theresa Burt De Perera & Dr. Cait Newport
Biography & Research Interests:
My research explores the behavioural mechanisms that underpin spatial cognition and allow animals to navigate, which is key to their reproductive success and survival. An important navigational tool is path integration, where an animal’s position relative to home is updated throughout its journey. Path integration allows a navigator to compute a more efficient route home and crucially relies on the ability to estimate distance travelled. The visual mechanisms that underpin distance estimation in many animals might be shaped by the visual environment. For example, anthropogenic disturbance is systematically increasing turbidity in aquatic systems globally, which reduces visibility and might affect how distance travelled is measured. I aim to explore how the environment shapes the sensory basis of spatial cognition by exploring the behavioural mechanisms used by goldfish to estimate distance under different visual conditions.
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