The SEEC Lab investigates how animals perceive and respond to their environments, with a focus on how these responses shape evolutionary processes, ecological dynamics, and conservation outcomes. Our research is curiosity-led, targeting fundamental questions about the nature of sensory systems, cognition, communication, and behaviour.
We use a suite of approaches — field experiments, behavioural assays, modelling, and meta-research — to advance scientific understanding while grounding our questions in real ecological contexts. We are especially interested in how brains and behaviour evolve under environmental constraints to shape ecological processes.
Beyond our fundamental interests, we apply this work to pressing challenges: understanding how animals experience altered environments, how behavioural evidence can improve animal welfare, and how cognition can inform conservation design. We focus particularly on invertebrates and overlooked taxa whose influences and experiences remain underexplored.
We collaborate with government bodies, NGOs, zoos, and other academic teams to maximise both the theoretical and practical reach of our findings.
We explore how animals perceive and process information about their environments. Our work spans sensory physiology, learning, memory, attention, and decision-making, with a particular focus on insects as exciting models for studying general principles.
We investigate the nature and ethical significance of invertebrate minds. This includes behavioural explorations of learning, sentience, and pain-like states, as well as integrative theoretical work on consciousness and moral status.
We apply behavioural and ecological principles to conservation challenges, with a focus on resilience. This includes research on pollination networks, trophic interactions, and species responses to environmental change, to inform the management and support of threatened communities.
The Sensory Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Lab is led by Dr Thomas White.
For enquiries, please get in contact at thomas.white@sydney.edu.au or visit our website at www.tomwhite.io.
