Rachael Morgan

Rachael Morgan is a researcher at the Department of Biological Sciences (UiB). She completed her master’s degree at UiB and obtained her PhD from NTNU (2020); prior to the start of her TMF Starting Grant project, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Biological Sciences, UiB. She has published numerous articles in highly prestigious journals.

Rachael Morgan is a fish ecophysiologist interested in how fish cope with climate change, particularly rising temperatures and fluctuations in oxygen levels. Her research combines laboratory and field studies, aiming to increase ecological realism in lab experiments. In many areas, warming oceans are leading to reduced oxygen levels. Both factors affect fish in various ways, yet little is known about the impact on their vision and their ability to detect and react to threats. In the project “Beyond known climate effects in fish: combining vision, fear and energetics,” Morgan will investigate how heat and oxygen deprivation slow down visual processing and result in a loss of color perception and blurred images, making it harder to detect a predator attack. Morgan employs advanced experiments using an innovative virtual reality setup that recreates realistic scenarios, causing fish to perceive simulated predator attacks as genuine. Do fish expend more energy when frightened? Do they eat less? How are growth and survival affected? The results will provide new insights into how climate change influences fish behavior and the potential consequences for our fish stocks.

Morgan’s research group will comprise two PhD candidates, as well as partial funding for a researcher position and a technical position.

Ingress photo: Helge Skodvin