Learning to Adapt: Animal behaviour for conservation success

How can understanding animal behaviour support conservation action and population recovery?

Traditionally, wildlife conservation has focused on a populations ability to survive. Genetic and demographic research has allowed species to be managed and conserved if environmental changes threaten their potential to thrive.

However, if change is rapid, populations cannot adapt through genetic change alone, as individuals face threats to their existence before they have a chance to breed and maintain the population. Changes in behaviour, however, present ways animals can rapidly adapt to changes in their environment, requiring no slow genetic changes. These changes can be instinctive, such as shifts to home ranges, or finding shade in warming climates. However, some adaptations may require more in-depth learning, such as prey-switching, navigating landscape changes and migration routes, or dealing with new competitors.

Understanding how behaviours of threatened species have changed, or may likely change, has been the subject of much scientific research since the inception of conservation practice. Examples of such are evident throughout ZSL research, with teams tracking eel migrations, manta ray plastic avoidance and African wild dog responses to climate change. However, animal behaviour is poorly integrated into conservation action through policy and practice until recently.

In this event, speakers will explore how to integrate behaviour more closely into conservation, to ensure it can be an accessible and practical tool used in policy and management. Speakers will focus on how animal behaviour research can benefit work to bring species back from the brink of extinction, looking at how animals can learn to live alongside humans, adapt during reintroductions, and even treat disease.

Speakers will be announced shortly!

This event was rescheduled from 13th May 2025. If you registered to attend the event in May, you should still register again for this new date. Find out more about the event and other future events here.

Attending this event

• This Science and Conservation Event is free to attend but registration is required so we can monitor event numbers.
• The event will feature talks from the speakers, followed by a Q&A discussion panel. It will run from 6:00pm - 7:30pm, and doors will open at 5:30pm.
• Seats are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Venue: Huxley Lecture Theatre at the Meeting Rooms of the Zoological Society of London, Regents Park, NW1 4RY.
• Travel: Nearest underground: Camden Town Station; Nearest bus: no. 274.
• Recording disclaimer: The presentations and Q&A session will be recorded, and the recording published on our Science and Conservation YouTube channel afterwards. Please be aware that by attending this event you consent to be filmed or your voice to be recorded during the Q&A session, which will be included in the published video.

Further Information

• For enquiries about this event, please email scientific.events@zsl.org.
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