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<TITLE>Press Release for the 46th Annual Animal Behavior Society Meeting</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>ABS 46th Annual Meeting<BR>
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HI all,<BR>
Here is a press release from the Brazil 2009 46th Annual Meeting of the Animal Behavior Society held 22-26 June, 2009.<BR>
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<B>Featured Speakers:<BR>
</B>Distinguished Animal Behaviorist Address: Richard Dawkins (Oxford University)<BR>
Keynote Speaker: Daniel Rubenstein (Princeton University)<BR>
Fellows Lecture: Marlene Zuk (University of California, Riverside)<BR>
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<B>Caitlin Gabor’s conference notes:<BR>
</B>Richard Dawkins had never been to Brazil and is a hard speaker to land, but Regina Macedo convinced him when she explained how reading the “Selfish Gene” changed her life as an undergraduate student. Dawkins talk was entitled –“The Four Whos”. He discussed Tinbergen's well-known ‘Four Whys’ paper (“On Aims and Methods of Ethology, 1963”) that distinguished four meanings of the question, "Why does the animal do X?" The four meanings were emphatically not mutually exclusive. Dawkins extended The 'Fourth Why' concerned survival value: “What is the benefit of doing X?” by looking at the question, “Benefit to whom?”. Dawkins broke this “Who benefits?” question down into “Four Whos”. The first three who's were (1) how does the genotype benefit, (2) how does the phenotype benefit, and (3) how does the gene pool of the population benefit. The fourth who was a filler to follow from Tinbergen’s original 4 whys and was not further discussed. Dawkins gave examples to support each type of who and pointed out that the Four Whos are not mutually exclusive but mean different things.<BR>
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Dan Rubenstein gave a keynote talk on “Zebra Societies and Conservation: Different Types for Different Stripes”. He discussed conservation and survival of the endangered Grev zebra and how he used local citizens to help monitor the populations (gave gps instruments for accurate locations of sightings) and to help with maintaining their land in such a way as to promote the survival of the Grey Zebra. Rubenstein demonstrated how partnerships can lead to better stewardship and foster environmentally friendly economic development.<BR>
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Marelene Zuk gave the Fellow lecture entitled <B>“</B>Sexual Signals, Behavior, and the Rate of Evolution”. Zuk discussed how the evolution of sexual signals via sexual selection should be more rapid than via natural selection. She focused on her more recent work on Parasitoids affecting call evolution in pacific crickets. These fly parasitoids only overlap with crickets in Hawaii. As a result she found that these populations modulated the time of day they called and the call duration and interval thus diminishing their risk taking but making calls less desirable to female crickets. Later Zuk’s group found that crickets in Kauai stopped calling almost completely. She found that males no longer could call due to a Flatwing mutation that arose in less than 20 generation. Zuk found that this mutation was genetically controlled by a sex linked (x linked) gene. These mutated males became satellites to caller males as they could not attract females since they could not produce calls. Zuk found that rapid evolution in sexually-selected traits may be rare because the interaction between genes, behavior, and morphology imposes limitations on the degree of change that can be adopted in a population. However in the case of these crickets it evolved quickly because it was sex linked.<BR>
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The winner of the Allee Award this year submitted a paper and gave a presentation at the conference. His name is Daizaburo Shizuka from UC Santa Cruz and his talk was entitled “COOTS REDUCE COSTS OF LEARNING ERRORS AND REJECT BROOD PARASITE NESTLINGS”<BR>
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Shizuka discussed his research with American coots (<I>Fulica americana</I>), which are conspecific brood parasites. As such, they would benefit from the ability to recognize their own offspring. Most brood parasitized species of birds are unable to recognize and reject brood parasites. Costs of learning errors have been evoked to explain why many hosts of avian brood parasites fail to recognize and reject parasitic nestlings that are absurdly different than their own, while rejecting mimetic eggs. However, Shizuka found that American coots have a unique ability to recognize and reject brood parasite chicks even after they have hatched. Shizuka found that coots have reliable templates for recognizing their own chicks based on the first-hatched nestlings of each brood. Shizuka induced mis-imprinting and rejection of host chicks by replacing these template nestlings with foreign chicks, confirming costs of learning. Shizuka explained that the natural history of most other brood parasite-host interactions preclude the use of the same mechanism for recognition in other systems.<BR>
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Overall, the 46th Annual ABS meeting was a huge success! Please let me know if you would like any further information.<BR>
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Cheers,<BR>
Caitlin<BR>
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Caitlin R. Gabor, Ph. D.<BR>
Associate Professor<BR>
Texas State University<BR>
Department of Biology, <BR>
Science Building Room 384<BR>
San Marcos, TX 78666-4615<BR>
Work: (512) 245-3387; Fax: (512) 245-8713<BR>
E-mail: gabor@txstate.edu<BR>
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<a href="http://www.bio.txstate.edu/~gabor/gabor.htm">http://www.bio.txstate.edu/~gabor/gabor.htm</a><BR>
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