Teresa Iglesias

Dr Teresa Iglesias

Behavioral Neuro-Ecologist

Gulbali Institute

Biography

Teresa Iglesias is a Research Fellow in Animal Behavior and HDR coordinator at Charles Sturt University’s Gulbali Institute. Her research takes an integrative approach to investigating animal behavior across scales, ranging from the neurobiology of behaviors to their distribution across the tree of life. This has included work on birds, lizards, fish, and cephalopods, using methods including histology, field experiments, medical imaging, large-scale video analysis, and a suite of computational tools. Teresa is actively engaged in several research programs; antipredator behavior in birds, comparative neuroecology in marine fishes, and the study of sleep-like and REM sleep-like behaviors in cephalopods. She has years of extensive experience in lab-based marine aquaculture of fish and invertebrates, including cephalopods, in both open and closed systems. Teresa completed her PhD at the University of California, Davis in 2012, investigating how western scrub jays respond to dead conspecifics and heterospecifics. Teresa is interested in animal behavior and the intersection between ecology, evolution, and the neural basis of behavior.

Research
  • Sleep in cephalopods and other invertebrates
  • Comparative thanatology (avian)
  • Neural diversity and evolution in marine fish
  • Marine aquaculture
Publications

Recent Publications

  • Pophale, A., K. Shimizu, T. Mano, T. L. Iglesias, K. Martin, M. Hiroi, K. Asada, P. G. Andaluz, T. T. Van Dinh, L. Meshulam and S. Reiter (2023). Wake-like skin patterning and neural activity during octopus sleep. Nature 619(7968): 129-134.
  • Iglesias, T. L., Boal, J. G., Frank, M. G., Hanlon, R. T. (2019). Cyclic nature of the REM  sleep-like state in the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis. Journal of Experimental Biology  222, Doi: 10.1242/jeb.174862.
  • Iglesias, T. L., A. Dornburg, D.L. Warren, P.C. Wainwright, L. Schmitz, and E.P. Economo.  (2018). Eyes Wide Shut: the impact of dim-light vision on neural investment in marine  teleosts. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 31, Doi: 10.1111/jeb.13299.
  • Iglesias, T. L., Dornburg, A., Brandley, M. C., Alfaro, M. E., Warren, D. L. (2015). Life in the  unthinking depths: energetic constraints on encephalization in marine fishes. Journal  of Evolutionary Biology, 28, 1080-1090.
  • Iglesias, T. L., R. McElreath, and G. L. Patricelli. (2012). Western scrub-jay funerals:  cacophonous aggregations in response to dead conspecifics. Animal Behaviour, 84,  1103-1111.