XIMENA NELSON
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  • Publications- all
    • Birds - falcons, kea parrots and chooks
    • Portia, and other clever spiders
    • Jumping spider vision & attention
    • Mimicry and ant associate jumping spiders
    • Mosquito-eating jumping spiders
    • Beetle acoustics
    • Crowdsourcing, deceptive signalling, nectar-eating spiders and others
  • Projects
    • Kea cognition
    • Kea ecology & communication
    • Spider vision
    • Border biosecurity
    • Mimicry
    • Falcons
    • Predator-prey assessment
    • Personality
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Current projects

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Current research in my group.

  • Neural basis of information processing. Neuroethology of vision   
In this collaborative project involving scientists from NZ and Australia, we are using a combination of behavioural, electrophysiological, psychophysical and modelling tools to determine how it is that jumping spiders, whose eyes are only a few hundred microns wide, are able to see with a resolution not dissimilar to our own. Given that they can, how can they process this tremendous amount of information with a brain that makes the head of a pin look large? How are they using these “data” to make decisions?


  • Communication and cognition in kea
Animal communication plays a fundamental role in the study of animal cognition, yet, despite evidence that the kea has cognitive abilities rivalling that of primates, this relationship remains unexplored in what is arguably the world’s most charismatic bird. In collaboration with Dr Alex Taylor, at the University of Auckland, we are investigating kea cognition and the basis of emotion in non-human animals. This work is funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation's Diverse Intelligences Initiative and by the Brian-Mason Scientific & Technical Trust.

You can find more information on our "Warbling kea project" website.

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