Culum has made a significant contribution to the study of behavioural ecology of fishes over his research career. His research niche lies in the study of fish behaviour and its application to fisheries science with his most significant contribution being enhancing our understanding of fish cognition. Culum is a well-known champion of fish intelligence and increasingly strives to improve fish welfare. All but six of his 160+ peer reviewed papers and one of his 21 book chapters have fishes as the primary focus. Collectively he has 180+ publications which have been cited over 12000 times and he has an H-index of 59. He is in the top 1% of researchers in Research Gate. In 2025 Culum was Australia's most influential Animal Behaviour reseacher in The Australian’s 2025 Research magazine's top research scientists.

Culum has worked with a wide variety of model organisms including salmoniids, sticklebacks, rainbowfish, guppies and sharks. Much of his PhD research at the University of Queensland (2000) and post docs at Cambridge University focused on predator recognition and the social behaviour of fishes with a particular emphasis on social learning. His two reviews of social learning in fishes have been cited over 500 times each. Culum has applied his knowledge of fish cognition to enhancing the post-release survival of hatchery-reared fish (life-skills training). His review of this topic has been cited 450 times and life-skills training is now common practice in hatcheries world-wide.

Culum was the guest editor of a special issue on learning and memory in fishes in the review journal Fish and Fisheries. This collection of work was later released as a book entitled Fish Cognition and Behaviour published in 2006 & 2011 by Blackwell Scientific.
He is also Editor of The Journal of Fish Biology.

See Culum's webpage, Google Citation Index and Research Gate for publication details.