Post-Congress Symposia

The following five symposia will take place on Friday August 15, 2008. All deal with timely and exciting topics. Everyone who has registered for the main congress is welcome to attend the symposia. If you are interested in participating as a speaker or discussant in one of these sessions, please contact the symposium organizers. Although the planned time period for these symposia is 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, growing interest in the symposia may necessitate extending the sessions until 3:00 pm. Contact the symposium organizers for updates on expected duration. It will be possible to check out of the residence halls as late as 4:00 pm, or to spend another night. Click the Email Registration Assistance tab at the bottom of the registration webpages to request another night.

Structure, function and dynamics of social networks in animal groups

Organizers: Dhruba Naug () and Jens Krause ()

Program

The essence and success of social groups fundamentally lie in the intricate functional links that connect its members with each other and facilitate the exchange of information and materials. However, this very efficiency of the network also opens up the group to be potential invasion from external harmful agents such as pathogens. Therefore, the emergent structure of the social network is probably a product of several opposing demands acting at the level of the individual. Given the pervasiveness of networks at all levels of organization, their structural and functional dynamics have recently become a major topic of interest across a wide variety of disciplines. In this symposium, we will discuss research that has explicitly looked at how social network theory can contribute to our understanding of topics such as cooperation, social learning, sexual selection and disease transmission by examining both the processes and patterns of social behavior in animals.

Decision-making during predator-prey encounters – identifying transformative research in antipredator behavior

Organizers: Theodore Stankowich (Lead organizer, ), Daniel Blumstein (), Esteban Fernández-Juricic (), and Steven Lima ()

Program

Link to Predator-Prey Symposium website

Animals have evolved a wide variety of morphological adaptations and behavioral tactics to help them detect and avoid predators, warn conspecifics about the presence of predators, deter their attack, and escape during pursuit. A variety of factors make the decision-making process in both predators and prey during encounters highly dynamic. In this symposium, we will form working groups to focus on specific subjects relevant to how animals respond to predators and how predator behavior influences these responses:

• Cognition (learning, experience, decision rules, habituation, sensitization),
• Perception (visual detection and visual systems, speed of recognition, detection of predator cues),
• Predator-Prey Games (game theory, prey responses contingent on predator’s actions and vice versa, population-level influences on decision-making by predator and prey during encounters), and
• Comparative Studies (development of predictive models of antipredator behavior).

Groups will discuss what is known, what is not known, where is the field going, and what are the methodological constraints on progress, then report their findings in an open forum. The goals of this symposium are to outline advances in our knowledge of risk assessment during predator-prey encounters, forge new collaborations, and discuss broad topics for the next generation of transformative research in antipredator behavior.

Send message to to be added to the symposium mailing list.

Advances in statistical philosophy and experimental design in behavioral ecology

Organizers: Laszlo Garamszegi () and Shinichi Nakagawa ()

Program and Abstracts

We aim to bring together researchers with different interests in behavioral ecology to discuss recent developments in analytical approaches that offer alternatives to hypothesis testing based on statistical significance. We would like to focus on the basic philosophy behind different approaches by considering pro and contra arguments. We plan to provide a broad array of examples of biological questions that can be tested in correlative or experimental designs, in intra- or inter-specific contexts, and in different taxonomic groups. We propose a discussion along an “ABC” framework, in which “A” stands for AIC (Akaike’s Information Criterion) and information theoretic approaches, “B” refers to Bayesian inference, and “C” emphasizes the importance of confidence intervals and effect size estimates. With this symposium, we hope to assist objective decisions of behavioral ecologists over data analysis, which seems to become more and more complex over recent years.

Flexible female choice and the evolution of male sexual ornaments

Organizer: Alexis Chaine ()

Program

Classical theory for the evolution of male traits by sexual selection assumes that female choice is fairly consistent. However, a variety of studies have now shown that female choice can be much more complex and that flexibility in choice can yield fitness benefits. Spatial, temporal, and among female variation is likely to have profound consequences on the evolution of exaggerated male ornaments and changes our perspective on the role females play in such selection. The goal of this symposium is to highlight variable selection and flexible female choice through both empirical and theoretical studies and to generate discussion on questions that would be especially fruitful for future studies of flexible female choice. The symposium will be a balance of talks and discussion and participants should be prepared to take an active role in discussions on the topic.

Reproductive skew - a critical assessment

Organizers: Reinmar Hager () and Kern Reeve ()

Program

Recent advances in theoretical and empirical research have yielded exciting new perspectives on the evolution of reproductive skew. Novel synthetic models allowing more realistic assumptions (such as incomplete control by dominants) and making richer predictions (such as the degree of conflict within social groups), along with empirical studies testing both the theoretical assumptions and predictions in a broadening range of systems, together offer a fresh opportunity to review the utility of the skew framework. This symposium aims to bring together most recent theoretical and empirical studies in both talks and discussions, highlighting both ultimate and proximate causes of skew as well as alternative and critical views. With the renewed interest in skew theory and increasing number of empirical studies this symposium promises to be an exciting and timely opportunity to assess whether some of the promises of skew theory have been upheld and whether this framework truly advances our understanding of sociality. The discussion following the talks hopefully will pave the way both for development of more realistic models of reproductive skew and better-targeted tests of the theory in empirical studies.