(apologies for cross-posting)

we are pleased to announce and invite you to participate in the following symposium, to be held as part of the 9th European Conference on Behavioural Biology (ECBB) (Liverpool, UK, 9-12 August 2018): “Acoustic signatures in animal vocalisations”

Organizers: Dr. Livio Favaro, Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Italy (livio.favaro@unito.it); Dr. Marco Gamba, Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Italy (marco.gamba@unito.it); Dr. Marina Scheumann, Institute of Zoology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Germany (marina.scheumann@tiho-hannover.de)

Symposium description:  Vocal communication is widespread in vertebrates and vocalisations have the potential to encode a variety of information, including the species, population, and geographical location of the emitter. When looking more in detail at the content of the vocal signals, these often also contain acoustic cues to individuality, sex, age, body size and even emotional status. Such acoustic signatures can be encoded in vocalisations using universal voice cues, related to the physical features of the signaler, modulation of spectral characteristics over time, which requires fine control of the vocal organs, or the combination of vocal units into meaningful biological sequences. Studying acoustic signatures in vocalisations can allow a better understanding of species’ evolutionary history, behavioral ecology as well as investigating the sexual and social sources of selection acting on both signalers and receivers. This symposium will explore new approaches and directions in the field of sensory ecology. It will focus on comparison across species, with contributions focusing on different taxa and several modalities to encode acoustic signatures in vocalisations. Finally, it will explore how recent advances in sound recording and signal processing allow a far better investigation of the content of animal calls. Such technological improvements also open novel scenarios for tracking individuals or populations using sounds.