Dear list members,

(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 8th European Conference on Behavioural Biology (Vienna, Austria, 12 – 15 July 2016): “Animal vocal communication: function, structures, and production mechanisms”

Organizers: Dr. Livio Favaro, Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Italy (livio.favaro@unito.it); Dr. Maxime Garcia, Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Austria (maxime.garcia@univie.ac.at)

Symposium description: While the function of vocal communication and the type of information conveyed by animal vocalizations have attracted of lot of interest in the fields of animal behaviour and ecology, as well as animal welfare more recently, vocal production has remained relatively poorly studied. Despite signs showing that this bioacoustics topic is growing at the moment, it appears necessary to pay more attention to it since the ways in which vocalizations are produced are bound together with sound structure (via anatomical and biophysical sound generation properties) and functionality (via a highlight of the physiological and affective/motivational states of the caller that can be picked up by a listener). Reaching a better understanding of sound production throughout various animal taxa is therefore a necessary step to investigate the function and establishment of communicative features within the animal kingdom (both at proximate and ultimate levels, respectively such as acoustic gradation in vocal repertoires and the communicative values of acoustic signals in contexts of sexual selection). Our symposium will extend these ideas by presenting recent studies that aim to improve our insight on some of the biological principles that drive the production and define the role of animal vocalizations. It will consist of a general introduction, followed by studies that are more specific to particular model species, vocal production mechanisms and vocal analysis methodologies.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 20 April 2016

For more info to the conference, abstracts submission and registration, please visit: http://www.ecbb2016-vienna.com/home/

We look forward to seeing you in Vienna.

Best wishes,
Livio Favaro

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Livio Favaro, PhD
Università degli Studi di Torino
Dip. Scienze della Vita e Biologia dei Sistemi
Laboratorio di Zoologia e Biologia Marina
Via Accademia Albertina, 13 - 10123 Torino
Tel.    +39.011.6704538 / 78
Fax    +39.011.6704508
e-mail livio.favaro@unito.it