Meeting: When Predators Attack: Sensing and Motion in Predator-Prey Interactions; January 3-7, 2013, San Francisco, CA

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Predation is a fundamental interaction between animals. It plays an essential role in shaping ecological communities and has direct consequences for the survival, growth and reproduction of species. Despite a vast body of research on the ecology of predation, it is not clear how the sensory and locomotor systems of animals determine the outcome of a predatory attack. Through the use of cutting-edge techniques, investigators have only recently made this a tractable area of research. The goal of this symposium is to highlight recent findings that are advancing our understanding of how sensory-motor dynamics affect predator-prey interactions. The symposium will bring together presentations on a diversity of animals (e.g. bats, insects, fishes, crustaceans), locomotory modes (e.g. swimming, flying, jumping) and sensory systems (e.g. mechanoreception, vision, chemoreception, echolocation), to provide insight into the unifying themes of this emerging field. Broader Impacts: The structure of the symposium is designed to facilitate exchange between biologists from different fields, geographical areas and career levels. The talks will be open to attendees of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) in San Francisco, CA on January 3-7, 2013. Invited participants include three women, three assistant professors, three student speakers, two researchers from non-academic institutions and four international participants. In addition, students and postdoctoral researchers will have the opportunity to contribute presentations in a complementary session. The meeting agenda is available online (sicb.org/meetings/2013/symposia/predator.php) and participants will contribute to a published volume of the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology (icb.oxfordjournals.org) in 2013. Due to its excellent history of supporting and encouraging student participation, SICB is an ideal venue for engaging young investigators in this topic and encouraging the types of integrative research approaches needed to answer outstanding questions about the sensory-motor dynamics that mediate predator-prey interactions.