CONFERENCE: Vibration as a Communication Channel: A Symposium January 3-7,2001 - Chicago, IL

Society For Integrative And Comparative Biology, Herndon VA

Investigators

Abstract

This symposium will bring together ten scientists and engineers from the U.S. and Austria for the first meeting to share research on vibration signals. Talks will describe use of vibration in predator defense, prey detection, recruitment to food, mating behavior, and maternal/brood social interactions, as well as synthetic signals sent back to animals, and channels through which signals are gathered and processed. The speakers are males and females from all academic ranks, engineers and biologists, field and lab specialists. The symposium will be hosted by the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) at its annual meeting, January 3-7, 2001, in Chicago. Poster and paper sessions will be held for students and others with interests in vibration. A meeting hosted by the SICB's Division of Animal Behavior will encourage informal discussions among these students and the symposium speakers. The SICB provides a vehicle for the diversity of disciplines to come together for a highly productive session that will be published in a journal, American Zoologist, accessible to scholars that do not attend the symposium. Computers and hardware such as the geophone, used to listen for footfalls in the jungles of Vietnam, now allow researchers to answer increasingly sophisticated questions about how animals send and receive signals. Scientists have known for some time that leafcutter ants use vibration to recruit foragers or to signal for help when buried alive, but the use of vibration in animal communication is much more ubiquitous than previously thought. It occurs in insects, frogs, kangaroo rats, elephants and bison.