Psychological Mechanisms in Animal Communication

Book excerpt: This book analyzes the psychological mechanisms critical to animal communication. The topics covered range from single neurons to broad-scale phylogenetic patterns, shedding new light on the sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processes that underlie the communicative behaviors of signalers and receivers alike. In so doing, the contributing authors collectively integrate research questions and methods from behavioral ecology, cognitive ethology, comparative psychology, evolutionary biology, sensory ecology, and neuroscience. No less broad is the volume’s taxonomic coverage, which spans bees to blackbirds to baboons. The ultimate goal of the book is to stimulate additional research into the diversity and evolution of the psychological mechanisms that make animal communication possible.