Collaborative Research: Multimodal Communication, mate choice and predation risk

我们通过多种感官（即感觉通道）接收和分析来自环境的信息。例如，当我们进行社交互动时，我们不仅要听别人说话？但我们也会读他们的肢体语言来解释他们的意思。但是来自不同感官渠道的信息是如何相互作用来影响我们的社会决策的呢？在这一系列的研究中，我们将确定声音和视觉线索如何影响túngara青蛙的择偶决定。和大多数青蛙一样，túngara青蛙用响亮而明显的求偶叫声来寻找配偶。雌性会比较雄性的求偶叫声，并利用这些信息来选择配偶。但是雌性呢？S的决定也会受到视觉提示的影响，男性？S大而明显的声囊。通过使用机器蛙，我们发现雌蛙更喜欢有一个巨大的充气-收缩声囊的雄蛙，而不是发出同样叫声但没有动态声囊的雄蛙。我们在这些结果的基础上，解决了几个关于声音和视觉线索如何相互作用影响女性决策的基本问题：声音和视觉线索的相对价值是什么？视觉线索的增加会影响女性吗？记忆中的呼叫？视觉线索是否有助于识别大型合唱中的单个雄性？视觉线索的增加是否会影响女性做出决定所需的时间？所有这些研究都将为包括人类在内的动物如何通过不同的感官渠道整合周围环境中的信息提供见解。在这项工作的过程中，我们将培训大约25名学生，其中许多是女性和少数民族，使用机器人技术来研究行为。

We receive and analyze information from our environment through multiple senses (i.e. sensory channels). When we interact socially, for example, we not only listen to someone?s words but we also read their body language to interpret their meaning. But how does information from different sensory channels interact to influence our social decisions? In this series of studies we will determine how acoustic and visual cues influence mate choice decisions in the túngara frog. As do most frogs, túngara frogs advertise for mates with loud and conspicuous mating calls. Females compare mating calls among males and use this information to choose a mate. But the female?s decision is also influenced by the presence of a visual cue, the male?s large and conspicuous vocal sac. Using robotic frogs we have shown that females prefer a calling male with a large inflating-deflating vocal sac to a male producing the same call but without a dynamic vocal sac. We build upon those results to address several fundamental questions about how acoustic and visual cues interact to influence female decision making: What is the relative value of acoustic and visual cues? Does the addition of visual cues influence a female?s memory of calls? Do visual cues aid in recognizing individual males in large choruses? Does the addition of a visual cue influence the time it takes for females to make decisions? All of these studies will provide insights into how animals, including humans, integrate information in the environment around them through different sensory channels. In the process of this work, we will be training approximate 25 students, many of them women and minorities, in the use of robotic technologies to study behavior.