Report your observation of fish using tools

Any information is helpful, so don't hesitate even if you are not sure about your observation!

➡️ Send us an email at juliette.tarieladam@gmail.com.

➡️ Or fill in this participation form

🙏 Thank you!

Participant information

What will your observation contribute?

Your observation of fish using tools will help document anvil use by fish and determine factors driving tool use evolution (the project description is here). The two researchers involved in the project and funders are described here.

What will happen to your observation?

1️⃣ Initially, only the two project investigators have access to what you send us, so any photos or videos you share can be viewed only by us. The only personal data we collect are your name and email address, and only if you choose to provide them. Your data is stored securely on Dr Juliette Tariel-Adam's computer and backed up to OneDrive.

⚠️ Data is now stored on Airtable. If this is a concern for you, please contact us.

2️⃣ If you provide your email address, we will ask whether we may feature your observation on our website and on the project's Instagram account. We aim to feature every observation we receive, as a way of thanking you and highlighting your contribution. You can see examples on Instagram.
This will only happen if you agree: we will always ask for your consent and give you the chance to review the content before it is published.
If you sent us a video, we may also ask whether we can share it on YouTube to help make fish tool use as widely known as possible.

3️⃣ After that, we will compile all observations in a final dataset and analyse it to answer the project questions about the evolution of tool use. You will be informed of any publications on social media, on the website and by email (if you provided your email address). Once the first paper is published, the final dataset will be published in open access (see below). Of everything you have sent us, only what is included in this dataset will be made publically available. The rest will only be accessible to the two project investigators.

Withdrawal

At any time before the dataset is published, you can send us an email to modify or delete your observation at juliette.tarieladam@gmail.com.

🗂️ What will the final dataset contain?

The final dataset will compile all observations with the following information for each observation:

• the species name
• the location of the observation
• details about fish behaviour: technique, type of prey item, etc

According to your consent, the final dataset will also include:

• the name of the person who made the observation (meaning you!)
• the link to the picture or video of the observation

We ask for your consent on the form and by email.

🤝 Why make the final dataset open access?

We believe that science must be collaborative, transparent and open access to be as efficient, reliable and fair as possible. Everyone will be able to access the final dataset for further research or simply out of curiosity about the use of tools in fish.

©️ Licence used for the final dataset

Firstly, what is a data licence? A licence is an agreement intended for data users to specify what they can or cannot do with the data. The final dataset will be under the Creative Commons licence CC BY 4.0, don’t get afraid of the name! This licence indicates that the data can be used, meaning that it can be modified and shared, but that credit must be given to the authors when it is used.

The dataset will be deposited on the online data repository Zenodo. An online data repository is like an online library for data. It allows datasets to have a licence and metadata indicating the author and relevant information to make it easier to find the data.

Background picture by Joseph Gracia