What Sensory Ecology Can Teach Us About Society and Evolution

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Many neuroscientists have studied the development of Individual Recognition in the natural world, which is the ability of one organism to recognize another and change their behavior in response. For instance, the simplest type of individual recognition (called binary individual recognition) … Continue reading

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Mosquitoes’ Ability to Escape Looming Threats in Varied Light Conditions

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Flying insects, such as mosquitoes, have evolved the ability to evade looming objects such as predators and swatting hands. This is a useful skill since the intended blood hosts of mosquitoes often exhibit defense behaviors, like swatting or tail swishing, … Continue reading

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Hold Your Breath: How the Scent of CO2 May Contribute to Mosquitoes’ Attraction to Skin

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You’re walking through the forest on a warm summer day, and you feel the familiar sting of a mosquito biting your arm. As you swat away the fly you notice a smattering of other bites you have accrued throughout your … Continue reading

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Wolves use Wind to Hide and Seek Beavers

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Wolves (Canis lupus) are predators. Beavers are foragers. They both use their keen sense of smell to survive. That much is clear. But wolves have the overwhelming advantage in speed and you might think they take advantage of that to … Continue reading

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Dr. Gall talks to NPR about the quiet during COVID-19

Dr. Gall recently appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered to discuss how reduced anthropogenic noise might affect the singing life of birds and other vocal animals.

Check it out here!

 

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Changing Climate, Same Sensory Systems

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Typically, when we talk about climate change and all of its associated effects such as the sea levels rising, droughts, and literal warming of the planet, we have a very human-centric point of view. We typically ask questions about the … Continue reading

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Where’s my nest? Multimodal cues facilitate nest recognition in carpenter bee aggregations

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Social organisms experience a trade-off between the benefits of group living and the potential fitness costs generated by spatial crowding. The advantages of group living are partially offset by the cognitive challenges present in maintaining social boundaries. Group-living organisms typically … Continue reading

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Frog and Toad (and Mockingbird) Are Friends: Mockingbirds Mimic Frogs and Toads in North America

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Mockingbirds have the extraordinary ability of imitating non-mockingbird and even non-bird animals. A great deal of research has been done on birds’ mimicry of other birds, but examples of birds imitating non-bird models are very limited; included among this small … Continue reading

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Do bats confuse traffic with the weather?

Animals rely on their sensory systems to gather information about their environments and use that information to help them behave in ways that will be beneficial to their ability to survive and reproduce. However, anthropogenic noise in the environment can … Continue reading

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Jumping to Their Own Beat – Jumping Spiders Shortcut Recognition

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Wherever you’re reading this from, whether it be your home, the library, wherever, you had to navigate to your current location. We don’t typically think of this as navigation as it usually requires minimal effort when following known routes. But … Continue reading

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