Collaborative Research: Multimodal Communication, mate choice and predation risk

我们通过多种感官（即感官通道）接收和分析来自环境的信息。 例如，当我们在社交中互动时，我们不仅要听别人说话？我们也通过阅读他们的肢体语言来理解他们的意思。 但是，来自不同感官渠道的信息如何相互作用，影响我们的社会决策？ 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青蛙用响亮而显眼的交配叫声来寻找配偶。 雌性比较雄性之间的交配叫声，并利用这些信息来选择配偶。 但女性呢？的决定也受到存在的视觉线索，男性？大而明显的声囊。 使用机器青蛙，我们已经表明，女性更喜欢一个呼吁男性与一个大的充气-放气的声囊男性生产相同的呼叫，但没有动态的声囊。 我们建立在这些结果，以解决几个基本问题，听觉和视觉线索如何相互作用，影响女性的决策：什么是听觉和视觉线索的相对价值？视觉线索的增加会影响雌性吗？电话的记忆？视觉线索是否有助于识别大型合唱团中的单个男性？视觉提示的增加是否会影响女性做出决定所需的时间？所有这些研究都将深入了解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。 在这项工作的过程中，我们将培训大约25名学生，其中许多是妇女和少数民族，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.