Helping fish fight their own battles

A terrific article on the groundbreaking research of past PhD student Samantha Bui, which was recently published in the Journal of Zoology. Through a creative experiment, Sam and her colleagues worked out that fish have an inherent ability to use behaviour to deter parasites at the point of contact. Behaviour really is the first line of defence.

Her results are important for aquaculture – if the artificial environments fish farms create restrict the way fish display these natural defence behaviours, then they will be more susceptible to infection.