The last decades have brought a significant increase in research on acoustic communi cation in animals. Publication of scientific papers on both empirical and theoretical aspects of this topic has greatly increased, and a new journal, Bioacoustics, is entirely devoted to such articles. Coupled with this proliferation of work is a recognition that many of the current issues are best approached with an interdisciplinary perspective, requiring technical and theoretical contributions from a number of areas of inquiry that have traditionally been separated. With the notable exception of a collection edited by Lewis (1983), there have been fewvolumes predominatelyfocused on technical issues in comparative bioacoustics to follow up the earlyworks edited by Lanyon and Tavolga (1960) and Busnel (1963). It was the tremendous growth of expertise c:()ncerning this topic in particular that provided the initial impetus to organize this volume, which attempts to present fundamental information from both theoretical and applied aspects of current bioacoustics research. While a completely comprehensive review would be impractical, this volume offers a basic treatment of a wide variety of topics aimed at providing a conceptual framework within which researchers can address their own questions. Each presentation is designed to be useful to the broadest possible spectrum of researchers, including both those currently working in any of the many and diverse disciplines of bioacoustics, and others that may be new to such studies.

In order to communicate, animals send and receive signals that are subject to their particular anatomical, psychological, and environmental constraints. This SHAR volume discusses both the production and perception of acoustic signals. Chapters address the information that animals communicate, how the communication is developed and learned, and how communication systems have adapted and evolved within species. The book will give examples from a variety of species.

Information is a core concept in animal communication: individuals routinely produce, acquire, process and store information, which provides the basis for their social life. This book focuses on how animal acoustic signals code information and how this coding can be shaped by various environmental and social constraints. Taking birds and mammals, including humans, as models, the authors explore such topics as communication strategies for “public” and “private” signaling, static and dynamic signaling, the diversity of coded information and the way information is decoded by the receiver. The book appeals to a wide audience, ranging from bioacousticians, ethologists and ecologists to evolutionary biologists. Intended for students and researchers alike, it promotes the idea that Shannon and Weaver’s Mathematical Theory of Communication still represents a strong framework for understanding all aspects of the communication process, including its dynamic dimensions.

Walk near woods or water on any spring or summer night and you will hear a bewildering (and sometimes deafening) chorus of frog, toad, and insect calls. How are these calls produced? What messages are encoded within the sounds, and how do their intended recipients receive and decode these signals? How does acoustic communication affect and reflect behavioral and evolutionary factors such as sexual selection and predator avoidance? H. Carl Gerhardt and Franz Huber address these questions among many others, drawing on research from bioacoustics, behavior, neurobiology, and evolutionary biology to present the first integrated approach to the study of acoustic communication in insects and anurans. They highlight both the common solutions that these very different groups have evolved to shared challenges, such as small size, ectothermy (cold-bloodedness), and noisy environments, as well as the divergences that reflect the many differences in evolutionary history between the groups. Throughout the book Gerhardt and Huber also provide helpful suggestions for future research.

This volume provides a comprehensive selection of recent studies addressing insect hearing and acoustic communication. The variety of signalling behaviours and hearing organs makes insects highly suitable animals for exploring and analysing signal generation and hearing in the context of neural processing, ecology, evolution and genetics. Across a variety of hearing species like moths, crickets, bush-crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and flies, the leading researchers in the field cover recent scientific progress and address key points in current research, such as: - How can we approach the evolution of hearing in insects and what is the developmental and neural origin of the auditory organs? - How are hearing and sound production embedded in the natural lifestyle of the animals, allowing intraspecific communication but also predator avoidance and even predation? - What are the functional properties of hearing organs and how are they achieved at the molecular, biophysical and neural levels? - What are the neural mechanisms of central auditory processing and signal generation? The book is intended for students and researchers both inside and outside of the fascinating field of bioacoustics and aims to foster understanding of hearing and acoustic communication in insects.

Based on the approach laid out in the 1950s by Nobel laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen, this book looks at animal communication from the four perspectives of mechanisms, ontogeny, function, and phylogeny.

Communication is an essential factor underpinning the interactions between species and the structure of their communities. Plant-animal interactions are particularly diverse due to the complex nature of their mutualistic and antagonistic relationships. However the evolution of communication and the underlying mechanisms responsible remain poorly understood. Plant-Animal Communication is a timely summary of the latest research and ideas on the ecological and evolutionary foundations of communication between plants and animals, including discussions of fundamental concepts such as deception, reliability, and camouflage. It introduces how the sensory world of animals shapes the various modes of communication employed, laying out the basics of vision, scent, acoustic, and gustatory communication. Subsequent chapters discuss how plants communicate in these sensory modes to attract animals to facilitate seed dispersal, pollination, and carnivory, and how they communicate to defend themselves against herbivores. Potential avenues for productive theoretical and empirical research are clearly identified, and suggestions for novel empirical approaches to the study of communication in general are outlined.