Conference: Spatio-Temporal Dynamics in Communication: A Workshop and Symposium at Consecutive SICB Meetings, 2020 in Austin, TX and 2021 in Washington, D.C.

动物在空间和时间中的位置决定了它收集周围世界信息的能力。这些“时空”关注对于相互交流的动物特别重要：随着时间的推移，发送者和接收者的相对位置可以帮助优化信息交换或阻碍信息交换。这其中的一个关键原因是，感觉系统和刺激它们的信号通常是高度敏感的。方向性的以雄性宽尾蜂鸟的求偶表演为例，其中包括戏剧性的高速俯冲，羽毛发出的响亮声音，以及他彩虹色喉咙的惊人闪光。为了对未来的配偶产生最大的影响，雄性必须完美地安排时间和位置，以毫秒和毫米的精度协调这些元素的展示。如果他没有把他的羽毛对准太阳和她的栖木，他的洋红色闪光灯就不会完全熄灭。雌性一定在直视他。如果他在她的眼角，她可能会错过大部分的表演。但是，这些时空动态是如何由参与者协调的呢？个体在空间和时间的导航能力上是否存在差异，从而影响他们在沟通和相关决策方面的成功？换句话说，动物交流的这一方面是如何以及为什么会进化的？要回答这些看似简单的问题，需要整合许多科学领域的见解，包括神经科学、认知生态学、生物力学、感觉生态学、计算机科学、进化生物学、动物行为学和哲学。这种整合虽然具有挑战性，但有望开辟令人兴奋的新的调查途径，在这些领域和其他领域都将带来红利。 这个研讨会和研讨会系列将汇集来自不同领域的研究人员，开始解决这些问题和其他问题，以更好地了解信号是如何受到时间和位置的影响。 来自代表性不足的群体的早期职业和研究人员将被招募参加所有步骤，以扩大这项工作的调查过程和受众。组织团队将协调一个研讨会和专题讨论会，在连续的综合和比较生物学学会年会上举办，将这些不同学科的研究人员聚集在一起，讨论跨学科方法和新的跨学科范式，研究动物交流中的时空动态。最初，为期一天的研讨会将合作伙伴早期职业研究人员与邀请教师的跨学科集群，讨论重大挑战，关键的知识差距，并需要研究边界，如果增加跨学科串扰。然后，这些工作组将确定一个有益的专题，供今后12个月进一步研究，并在这些努力中提出一份介绍和/或工作文件。后续专题讨论会将在三个专题会议中展示研讨会的产品以及前沿研究。其中一节将从神经生物学、认知和哲学的角度讨论复杂信号的接收器编码。本次会议的谈话将解决信号时空动态变化如何影响注意力，习惯化，学习，定位和场景分析。第二次会议将考虑生物力学，神经生理学和生态限制显示器的生产，与会谈解决显示器的性能以及直接显示有效地向适当的接收器。第三届会议将集中在机器学习和社会网络工具的开发，以表征时空动态，因为检查二元交互中相对简单的显示的常用方法不能捕捉复杂通信网络中相关的全部功能。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

An animal’s position in space and time determines its ability to collect information about the world around it. These ‘spatio-temporal’ concerns are of particular importance to animals engaged in communication with each other: the relative positioning of sender and receiver over time can help to optimize information exchange or hamper it. One key reason for this is that sensory systems and the signals that stimulate them are often highly directional. Take, for example, the courtship display of the male broad-tailed hummingbird, which involves a dramatic high-speed dive, a loud feather-generated sound, and a stunning flash of his iridescent throat. For maximum effect on a prospective mate, the male must time and place these elements of his display perfectly, coordinated with millisecond and millimeter precision. If he doesn’t align his feathers just right in relation to the sun and her perch, his magenta flash doesn’t quite go off. And the female must be looking directly at him. If he’s in the corner of her eye, she may miss most of the show. But how are such spatio-temporal dynamics coordinated by those involved? And do individuals differ in their ability to navigate space and time in ways that impact their success in communication and associated decision-making? In other words, how and why might this aspect of animal communication evolve? Answers to these deceptively simple questions require integration of insights from a number of scientific fields, including neuroscience, cognitive ecology, biomechanics, sensory ecology, computer science, evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and philosophy. Such integration, although challenging, promises to open exciting new avenues of inquiry that should pay dividends across these fields and beyond. This workshop and symposium series will bring researchers from various field together to begin addressing these questions and others to better understand how signaling is impacted by time and position. Early career and researchers from underrepresented groups will be recruited to participate at all steps to broaden the investigative process and audience for this work.The organizing team will coordinate a workshop and symposium, hosted at consecutive annual meetings of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, to draw together researchers from these different disciplines in discussions about interdisciplinary approaches and novel transdisciplinary paradigms for investigating spatio-temporal dynamics in animal communication. The initial, one-day workshop will partner early career researchers with interdisciplinary clusters of invited faculty to discuss major challenges, key knowledge gaps, and research boundaries in need if increased interdisciplinary crosstalk. These working clusters will then identify a profitable topic for further study in the subsequent 12 months, with a presentation and/or working paper to emerge from such efforts. The follow-up symposium will showcase workshop products alongside cutting edge research in three thematic sessions. One session will address receiver encoding of complex signals from neurobiological, cognitive, and philosophical perspectives. Talks in this session will address how variation in signal spatio-temporal dynamics impact attention, habituation, learning, localization, and scene analysis. The second session will consider biomechanical, neurophysiological, and ecological constraints on display production, with talks addressing both display performance as well as directing displays effectively toward appropriate receivers. The third session will focus on machine learning and social network tool development to characterize spatio-temporal dynamics, as common methods for examining relatively simple displays in dyadic interactions do not capture the full range of features relevant in complex communication networks.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.