Fish larvae orientation, between Miami and Villefranche

by Jean-Olivier Irisson, on October 29, 2015

This week was my last trip to Miami as part of this PUF program. It was full of new ideas and events (as the other posts on this blog indicate) and also familiar: I got to meet again with old friends and collaborators at RSMAS and I spent the week with Pr Claire Paris, the coordinator of the PUF program for RSMAS.

We discussed our respective works on fish larvae orientation and the Drifting In Situ Chamber, the instrument she pioneered and which we now both use. I had the opportunity to present the research done with that instrument in Villefranche through a seminar titled "Mediterranean fish larvae: orienteering champions". We discussed both old data (which will soon turn into new papers!) and the developments of the instrument, in particular for the work of her numerous PhD students: Matt Foretich who works on olfaction (and whose thesis committee I sit on), Alessandro Cresci who works on magnetic orientation (and who recently came to Villefranche for a class), and Romain Chaput (pictured below) who will work on group orientation, who did his Master's degree internship with Pr Paris through this PUF program and now starts a PhD with her. Romain and Claire asked me to also be part of his committee and I gladly accepted. Not only do I enjoy working with Claire but I have also been particularly interested in the question of the dynamics of groups of fish since some work we did together on that topic a few years ago (which got submitted for publication this very week!)

So overall, another very enjoyable week, full of work and promises. The last as part of this PUF program but hopefully (surely!) not the last in this fruitful partnership.