Research Scientist, Biology
University of Western Ontario

Michael Clinchy, PhD, is one of the world’s leading experts on the ‘ecology of fear’. The research group he and Prof. Liana Zanette supervise at Western University have conducted elegant experiments, published in top journals such and Science and Nature Communications, demonstrating that the fear of predators can have numerous adverse effects on animals in the wild, inducing long-lasting effects on the brain, causing chronic stress and reducing the number of young reared by more than half; significant costs that are nonetheless better than the alternative – actually falling victim to a predator.

Dr. Clinchy will relate how the behavioural and neurobiological effects of predator-induced fear in wild animals parallel those seen in PTSD in humans, suggesting that PTSD may be a human manifestation of the most immediate and primary of evolutionary imperatives – avoiding being killed by predator; hypervigilance, chronic stress and having fewer offspring all being the ‘evolutionary ‘cost’ of self-preservation and survival.