NEUROETHOLOGICAL MODELS FOR ACOUSTIC COMMUNICATION

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This proposal is a request for an ADAMHA Research Scientist Award (RSA). The research will focus on the investigation of neurobehavioral mechanisms that underlie auditory function and communication in crickets and flies because these insects can serve as model systems for understanding sensory processing and communication in higher animals. A major project involves the acoustic startle response (ASR) of crickets, which has numerous parallels to the ASR of mammals. The cricket's ASR exhibits several types of behavioral plasticity, including habituation, sensitization, and precedence effect, and the possibility that plasticity is under neuromodulatory control by biogenic amines will be investigated. In insects, acoustic behavior is mediated by many diverse mechanisms of sound production and a variety of hearing organs (ears), which are distributed among well-defined taxonomic lineages. Thus, it becomes possible to correlate the process by which identified neural changes occur with the pattern of acoustic behavior that evolved within insects. Thus, mechanistic physiological studies can be linked to an investigation of how behavioral adaptations evolve, a key first step in an evolutionary neuroethological approach to the study of behavior. The P.I. plans to continue his science education and mentoring activities through his involvement with the Grass Foundation, the Laboratory of Ornithology, and Bennington College. Other activities will include the development of laboratory teaching modules for undergraduate neuroscience, science enrichment through the introduction of bioacoustic teaching materials in grades K-12, and involvement with the Ithaca Science Center.