2016 50th Anniversary Congress, Edinburgh, UK

457 Pages·2016·11.95 MB·English

by  Wageningen Academic Publishers

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ISBN: 978-90-8686-287-0
Wageningen Academic 
Wageningen Academic 
P u b l i s h e r s
P u b l i s h e r s
Applied ethology 2016
Standing on the shoulders of giants

I S A E 2 0 1 6
Proceedings of the 50th Congress of the
International Society for Applied Ethology
12-15th July, 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Standing on the shoulders of giants
edited by:
Cathy Dwyer
Marie Haskell
Victoria Sandilands
OASES
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Welcome to the 50th Congress of ISAE
In 1966, following the ‘game-changing’ publication of Animal Machines in 1964 and the Brambell
Report in 1965, a small group of veterinarians began a Society for Veterinary Ethology in
Edinburgh. They hosted their first meeting in the University of Edinburgh’s Hume Tower, George
Square on June 4th 1966, with a symposium where four scientific presentations were delivered.
Fifty years on we are delighted to welcome the Society back to Edinburgh for the International
Congress. Edinburgh last played host to the Congress in 1991, for the 25th Anniversary, where the
name was changed to reflect the increase in scientists other than veterinarians who belonged
to the society and so it became the International Society for Applied Ethology. This was also the
first year that the organisers took the brave step of moving from a single session to two parallel
sessions to accommodate the number of submissions. By 2016 the number of papers submitted
to the meeting has increased a hundred-fold from that initial symposium, and we are honoured
to be hosting the largest ISAE Congress ever.
In this our 50th year, we want to both look back and reflect on how far we have come, and
reach forward to embrace new opportunities, new disciplines and new challenges that face
applied ethology. We have borrowed from the words of Isaac Newton in setting the theme of
this Congress: ‘if I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants’.
This perfectly encompasses our acknowledgement of the work of ‘giants’ in the field and our
attempts to ‘see further’ from the vantage point of their scientific insights. We have chosen, as
one of our most influential giants, the work of the great ethologist Nico Tinbergen, and have
framed three Congress sessions around his seminal questions in animal behaviour. However,
the application part of our name is also very important, as is our ability to respond and move
with the times to provide relevant support to animal welfare and other grand challenges facing
our world. So we have also developed sessions on trade-offs between animal welfare, applied
ethology and other issues such as sustainability and environmental management; and the
emerging field of positive welfare where applied ethology has much to offer. For those of us
who have spent years of a research career watching videos, or measuring things by hand, the
development of automation or novel technology represents an exciting advance in the types
of research questions we can now ask, and so we also have a session, ‘Novel Techniques’, full of
new developments to move our field forward.
We are really pleased that so many of you want to come to Edinburgh this summer to visit
our beautiful city and enjoy the Congress. However, this has meant, with 50% more abstracts
submitted than to any other Congress, that the number of people wanting oral presentations
has vastly exceeded the number of talks we can include in the programme. To accommodate
Applied ethology 2016 7
so much excellent research in applied ethology, we have borrowed from successful trials at
other Congresses: each morning of the programme we will have a period when there will be
three parallel sessions of talks; we have included in the programme short oral presentations of
5 minutes to allow more opportunities for oral presentations; and we have included again the
possibility for poster presenters to make an additional video poster presentation to increase the
visibility of their work. We hope that all these developments will mean that all presenters will
get the opportunity to talk about their work at this great annual meeting of scientists, students
and professionals in applied ethology.
A very warm welcome to Edinburgh this summer, and we look forward to the enduring ISAE
traditions of scientific excellence in presentations, passion and new insights in discussions, and
of course great dancing at the congress banquet.
Fàilte gu Alba
Cathy Dwyer, Marie Haskell and Victoria Sandilands
8 Applied ethology 2016
Acknowledgements
ISAE was jointly organised by:
• SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College)
• University of Edinburgh
• World Animal Protection
Scientific Committee
Marie Haskell (Chair), Alistair Lawrence, Cathy Dwyer, Kenny Rutherford, Tamsin Coombs, Laura
Dixon, Rick D’Eath, Fritha Langford, Pol Llonch, Jill Mackay, Malcolm Mitchell, Carol Thompson,
Victoria Sandilands, Simon Turner, Francoise Wemelsfelder
Organising Committee
Cathy Dwyer (Chair), Natalie Waran, Mike Appleby, Marie Haskell, Fritha Langford, Victoria
Sandilands, Simon Turner, Laura Dixon
Social Committee
Cathy Dwyer, Kenny Rutherford, Fritha Langford, Jill Mackay, Susan Jarvis, Tamsin Coombs,
Leonor Valente, Irene Camerlink
Social Media
Lauren Robinson, Fritha Langford
Ethics committee
Anna Olsson (Chair), Portugal
Marie Jose Hotzel, Brazil
Alexandra Whittaker, Australia
Francois Martin, USA
Franck Peron, France
Francesco De Giorgio, The Netherlands
Technical support
University of Edinburgh, SRUC
Professional conference organisers:
Zibrant http://www.zibrant.com/
Applied ethology 2016 9