Current Lab

Matthew MOrgan,
Post-Doctoral Associate

Matthew is an ecologist with a background spanning marine and terrestrial conservation projects across the UK, Seychelles, and Mauritius. He is interested in the links between ecological and social systems, with a focus on understanding how they interact to address conservation challenges. During his PhD at the University of Hull, he investigated urban blue spaces as socio-ecological systems using ecological, geospatial, and social approaches. In his current role on the AMAZONFISH: Fish, Fishers and Finances project, he conducts field observations and experiments to investigate the drivers of stress in ornamental fish supply chains. In his spare time, he enjoys wildlife photography, kayaking, and hiking.

niko howai,
post-doctoral associate

Niko has general research interests in applied economics in the areas of biodiversity, environmental, food, and development economics and policy centred around both land and oceans. He specialises in economic valuation research using choice modelling. Niko completed his PhD at the University of Reading in 2023 on valuing mangrove ecosystem services in Tobago. He previously worked as a lecturer in Business Analytics at Manchester Metropolitan University, a post-doctoral associate at the University of Manchester, and most recently the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS). At Manchester university he worked on the NERC-ESRC funded project ‘Biurbs’ to value people’s preferences for urban biodiversity. At SAMS he worked on evaluating blue finance mechanisms for seaweed protection and restoration in southeast Asia. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. His current research on the Fish Fishers and Finances project explores people’s preferences for higher welfare ornamental fish across the value chain from Brazil to the UK.

@nikoh8.bsky.social

jon richarson,
Research Fellow

Jon is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Glasgow. He is a behavioural ecologist interested in how animals “make the best of a bad job” by adjusting their behaviour in response to environmental change. His current work focuses on how animals cope with multiple environmental stressors and whether their combined effects can be worse than the sum of their parts. He mostly works with insects, including the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, a species that breeds on the carcasses of dead vertebrates and provides elaborate parental care. He is also interested in what we can learn from animals misdirecting their behaviour towards seemingly inappropriate targets. Jon’s work is primarily experimental, but he is also interested in using meta-analyses to identify broad ecological and evolutionary patterns across the animal kingdom. He completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh supervised by Per Smiseth and was subsequently a postdoc at the University of Minnesota supervised by Marlene Zuk. At the University of Glasgow, he is also affiliated with Jelle Boonekamp’s lab

mark mcinnes,
Phd Student

Mark is researching thermal preference behaviour in fish and its ecological relevance, with a focus on assessing the systems and apparatus used to measure the behaviour to examine how design aspects can influence measurement. He will explores how individual differences in temperature preference relate to behavioural and physiological traits, and whether laboratory measures reflect patterns observed in more natural settings. Mark completed a BSc (Hons) in Marine & Freshwater Biology, and an MRes in Ecology from University of Glasgow, undertaking his Master’s research in the Killen Lab to investigate experimental arena size effect on estimates of sociability in three-spine sticklebacks. Through his PhD funded by the FSBI, Mark aims to improve the reliability and ecological relevance of behavioural assays used across fish biology and thermal ecology.

Izzy Tiddy
PhD Student

Izzy’s research mainly focuses on fish behaviour in the context of the environment, including interactions with biotic and abiotic factors. For his PhD, Izzy is studying the effects of anthropogenic stressors including light pollution, temperature, and hypoxia on the links between individual social behaviour and group cohesion in fish. This project is co-supervised by Colin Torney, Mike Webster (University of St Andrews), and Christos Ioannou (University of Bristol). In the future, Izzy hopes to build on the work done in their PhD thesis by investigating how behavioural changes and group dynamics may link to broader ecosystem effects. Izzy completed his MSci with the University of Glasgow, which included a work placement year conducted at the University of Mauritius, Mauritius. During this year they studied the effects of Stegastes genus damselfish on other fish species and corals in the Mauritian lagoon. During their PhD, Izzy has also travelled to the US to undertake a course on fish swimming behaviour and physiology at Friday Harbour with the University of Washington, and to Moorea, French Polynesia to investigate the use of virtual reality in studying the effects of artificial light on fish physiology and behaviour. Izzy is a PADI Divemaster, competitive powerlifter, and active member of the UofG karate club.  

Helena Norman,
PhD Student

Helena’s research focuses on fish sleep behaviour and ecophysiology, investigating how climate-related stressors, such as temperature and hypoxia, may influence sleep and consequently how this affects waking behaviour, metabolism and activity. Helena completed a BSc (Hons) in Ecology from the University of Edinburgh, and joined the Killen Lab in 2022 for her MRes in Ecology and Environmental Biology at the University of Glasgow, where her research focused on how group size affects sleep behaviour in cardinal tetra. Now, during her IAPETUS2 funded PhD, she is excited to continue exploring sleep behaviour, focusing on the implications of environmental change on sleep architecture in fish and the potential for sleep deprivation. 

Catriona Forrest,
Technician

Catriona is widely interested in the behavioral ecology and evolution of aquatic animals and how furthering our understanding of them can help to protect ecosystems and stakeholders. She completed her undergraduate studies and a research internship in the Marine Behavioural Ecology lab at the University of Cambridge. Here, she investigated the selective pressure of fish predatory behaviour on prey movement patterns. Catriona went on to conduct a season of ecological fieldwork in the Cairngorm Mountains and from 2024 to 2026 worked for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, investigating environmental challenges and engaging directly with stakeholders. Catriona is working as part of the Killen lab group, supporting the delivery of the UKRI-funded interdisciplinary project Fish, Fishers and Finances: Working with Brazilian Traditional Communities to Improve the Ornamental Fish Trade.

Lab Alumni

Postdocs

Amelia Munson
Daphne Cortese
Emil Christensen
Barbara Koeck
Amélie Crespel
Natalie Pilakouta
Travis van Leeuwen
Lingqing Zeng
Shaun Robertson

Technicians

Anita Racz

Masters Students

Mark McInnis (MRes, Effects of arena size on measures of sociability)
Jane Kiarie (MSci, Effects of temperature on behavioural indicators of welfare in bristlenose catfish)
Jenna Black (MRes, Effects of temperature on learning and aggression in Siamese fighting fish)
Helena Norman (MRes, Effects of social group size on sleep in cardinal tetras)
Marie Levet (MRes, Effects of boat noise on social group dynamics in minnows)
Mustafa Soganci (MRes, Effects of hypoxia and temperature on social group dynamics in minnows)
Toby Miller (MRes, Effects of density on social behaviour in zebrafish)
Isabel Aragao (MRes, Effects of temperature on social networks in Corydoras catfish)
Anna Persson (MSci, Effects of metabolism on assortment within and among fish schools)
Stephanie McLean (MRes, Effects of feeding on spatial positioning of individuals within fish schools) 
Brooke Allan (MRes, Interplay between metabolic traits and social hierarchy position in fish)
Ben Cooper (MRes, Exposure to non-preferred temperature as a cost of group-living in fish)
Matt Pace (MSci, Modelling the movement of juvenile Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) through a fragmented seagrass landscape)
Laura Dalgetti (MSci, Differences in substrate preference between wild and domestic zebrafish)
Alyson Casey (MRes, The effects of body size and inter-shoal mixing on social networks in European minnows)
Chris Convery (MRes, The effects of fish socialty on individual vulnerability to capture by pot trap) 
Sarah Schembri (MSci, The effect of shoal size on gap-crossing in fragmented habitats in juvenile Atlantic cod)
Michaela Moran (MRes, The effects of olfactory prey cues on spontaneous activity in captive juvenile smallspotted catsharks and thornback rays)
Xiao Hu (MRes, The effect of shoal size on exploratory behvaiour in European minnows) 
Kirsty Brown (MRes, The effects of shoal size on aquatic surface respiration during hypoxia in juvenile crucian carp)
Peggy Xirogiannopoulou (MSci, The effect of feeding on temperature preference in tidepool fishes)
Dana Weldon (MRes, The effect of acute temperature change on behaviour in individual European minnows)
Hannele Honkanen (Hon, Eavesdropping and mate choice in swordtails)