The principle aim of this project is to use a robot model to explore mechanisms of female choice in cricket phonotaxis behaviour. The research will involve behavioural experiments on crickets, programming and evaluation of robot-based neural models in close comparison with the animal results, and exploration of evolutionary computation for the development of this behaviour.
An important issue in understanding the role and mechanism of female choice in evolution is the contribution of sensory bias (Ryan & Keddy-Hector, 1992). That is, certain 'preferences' shown by females may be the result of quite peripheral sensory and neural mechanisms that make particular signals easier to approach (potentially independently of whether the signal is an indicator of male quality). Choice by female crickets between conspecific male song has been previously studied (e.g. Simmons, 1988; Wagner et al 1995) ; however an explicit investigation of how its sensory system may determine/control choice has yet to be made.
We have developed an electronic model of the peripheral auditory system of the cricket and used it on a robot to investigate how phonotaxis is controlled (Webb, 1996; Lund et al 1997). Initial investigations have suggested that the ability to track one sound source out of two could have a very simple underlying neural mechanism (Webb & Hallam, 1996). Further, preferences in approach behaviour may occur without any explicit comparison: and these sensory biases may include temporal and frequency aspects of the signal, not just simple intensity.
The project would involve making a systematic study of signal preferences in female crickets and then determining to what degree these can be replicated by the simple robot model. It is likely that multiple models, based alternative theories of the underlying physiology, could be programmed and tested to determine which accounts most effectively for the data. In addition the project would use evolutionary robotic techniques to study potential paths of development in which a sensory bias develops and/or the signal evolves to exploit the bias. Thus this model system will provide detailed insight into sensory and neural mechanisms of sexual selection.
Lund, H., Webb, B. and Hallam, J. (1997) A robot attracted to the cricket species Gryllus bimaculatus Proceedings of ECAL97 MIT Press
Ryan, M.J. & Keddy-Hector, A. (1992) Directional Patterns of female mate choice and the role of sensory biases The American Naturalist 139: S4-S35
Simmons, L.W. (1988) The calling song of the field cricket Gryllus bimaculatus (de Geer) constraints on transmission and its role in intermale competition and female choice. Animal Behaviour 36:380-394
Wagner, W.E., Murray, A-M. and Cade, W.H. (1995) Phenotypic variation in the mating preferences of female field crickets Gryllus integer. Animal Behaviour 49:1269-1281
Webb, B. (1996) 'A robot cricket' Scientific American,275no.6:94-99.
Webb, B. & Hallam, J. (1996) 'How to attract females: further robotic experiments in cricket phonotaxis' in Maes, P. et al (eds) From animals to animats 4: proceedings of the International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour, MIT Press.
The Department of Psychology has a recently renovated and well-equipped robot lab, with 10 6811-based robots and 2 'Khepera' robots; 2 Pentium multimedia computers and 4 additional PCs; purpose-built experimental environments; and video recording and tracking facilities. The department provides electronic and technical workshops to support the hardware and excellent computing support, including a part-time computer operator specifically for the robot lab. The lab also has some facilities for performing and recording insect behavioural experiments - the department has further facilities for animal experiments including neurophysiology; and good contacts with the Life Science Department which offers additional facilities. The lab was set up to pursue animal behaviour based robot experiments and has been used for a number of projects in this area, e.g. phonotaxis, modelling polarized light and landmark navigation in ants and bees, exploring foraging behaviour, and neural mechanisms of learning. More information about current research can be found at the Animals and Robotics Group homepage.
More details about PhDs in the Department of Psychology and the procedure for applications is available here. You might also like to check the BBSRC Studentship pages for eligibility requirements for this project studentship.