Acyclic colourings of graphs with obstructions

Given a graph $G$, a colouring of $G$ is acyclic if it is a proper colouring of $G$ and every cycle contains at least three colours. Its acyclic chromatic number $\chia(G)$ is the minimum $k$ such that there exists a proper $k$-colouring of $G$ with no bicoloured cycle. In general, when $G$ has maximum degree $\Delta$, it is known that $\chia(G) = O(\Delta^{4/3})$ as $\Delta \to \infty$. We study the effect on this bound of further requiring that $G$ does not contain some fixed subgraph $F$ on $t$ vertices. We establish that the bound is constant if $F$ is a subdivided tree, $O(t^{{8/3}\Delta{2/3})$} if $F$ is a forest, $O(\sqrt{t}\Delta)$ if $F$ is bipartite and 1-acyclic, $2\Delta + o(\Delta)$ if $F$ is an even cycle of length at least $6$, and $O(t^{{1/4}\Delta{5/4})$} if $F=K_{3,t}$.