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

大多数引人注目的动物行为都与交流有关。蟋蟀啾啾，青蛙合唱，鸟儿歌唱。像这样的信号不是为私人谈话保留的，而是涉及许多发送者和接收者的固有社交信号。这种网络视角来得很慢。蜂鸣声是物种内部和物种之间用来交流捕食者的信号。它们可以对捕食者的重要信息进行编码。成功的鸣叫吸引了大量的个体和物种到捕食者的位置，将其赶出该地区。暴民事件似乎不是随机的，而是有组织的网络，具有复杂的物种相互作用。因此，它们提供了独特的机会来测试网络视角，以及种间交流如何决定物种相互作用和群落结构。该项目将与澳大利亚国立大学的Robert Magrath博士合作进行。Magrath博士是一位行为生态学家，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蜂群呼叫中被编码的，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中的第一个应用。该项目的数据将增加通信网络组装模式的通用性。这项工作将在澳大利亚国家植物园进行，使用与北美鸟类进化不同的鸟类。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对捕食者的信息进行编码。有了这些结果，一个时间同步的麦克风阵列将被部署，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。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.