EAPSI: Understanding how animals communicate and cooperate in response to predators

大多数明显的动物行为都与交流有关。蟋蟀鸣叫，青蛙合唱，鸟儿歌唱。像这样的信号并不是私人谈话的专属信号，而是涉及众多发送者和接收者的固有的社交信号。这种网络视角来得很慢。围攻叫声是在物种内部和跨物种之间使用的信号，用于交流关于捕食者的信息。它们可以对有关捕食者的重要信息进行编码。成功的聚众叫声吸引了无数个体和物种来到捕食者的位置，将其赶出该地区。暴动事件似乎不是随机的，而是具有复杂物种相互作用的有组织的网络。因此，它们提供了独特的机会来测试网络视角以及物种间的交流如何决定物种之间的相互作用和群落结构。该项目将与澳大利亚国立大学的罗伯特·马格拉思博士合作进行。马格拉斯博士是一名行为生态学家，他在打破动物交流的旧框架方面发挥了重要作用。这个项目将研究信息是如何在围攻呼叫中编码的，以及这些信息是如何被通信网络中的其他物种使用的。这将是网络视角在通信信号方面的首批应用之一。本项目的数据将增加通信网络组装模式的概括性。这项工作将在澳大利亚国家植物园进行，使用进化上与北美鸟类截然不同的鸟类。该项目将使用回放和捕食者模型来测试两种澳大利亚鸟类如何编码有关捕食者的信息。根据这些结果，将部署一个时间同步的麦克风阵列，以记录哪些物种正在使用编码信息，以及它们是如何使用这些信息的。这项研究的结论将促进我们对动物交流、捕食者-猎物相互作用和群落聚集的理解。该NSF EAPSI奖是与澳大利亚科学院合作资助的。

Most conspicuous animal behaviors are related to communication. Crickets chirp, frogs chorus, and birds sing. Signals like these are not reserved for private conversation, but are inherently social signals involving numerous senders and receivers. This network perspective has been slow coming. Mobbing calls are signals used both within and across species to communicate about predators. They can encode important information about predators. Successful mobbing calls attract numerous individuals and species to the predator's location to drive it from the area. Mobbing events do not appear to be random, but organized networks with complex species interactions. Therefore, they offer unique opportunities to test the network perspective and how interspecific communication dictates species interactions and community structure. This project will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Robert Magrath at Australian National University. Dr. Magrath is a behavioral ecologist who has been instrumental in shattering the old framework of animal communication.This project will address how information is being encoded in mobbing calls and how this information is used by other species in a communication network. It will be one of the first applications of the network perspective to communication signals. Data from this project will add generalizability to the patterns of communication network assembly. This work will be done in the Australian National Botanic Gardens using birds that are evolutionary distinct from North American birds. The project will use playbacks and predator models to test how two Australian bird species are encoding information about predators. And with these results, a time-synched microphone array will be deployed to record which species are using the encoded information and how they are using it. The conclusions from this research will advance our understanding of animal communication, predator-prey interactions, and community assembly. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Australian Academy of Science.