The Design of Animal Communication

When animals, including humans, communicate, they convey information and expresstheir perceptions of the world. Because different organisms are able to produce and perceivedifferent signals, the animal world contains a diversity of communication systems. Based on theapproach laid out in the 1950s by Nobel laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen, this book looks at animalcommunication from the four perspectives of mechanisms, ontogeny, function, and phylogeny.The book'sgreat strength is its broad comparative perspective, which enables the reader to appreciate thediversity of solutions to particular problems of signal design and perception. For example, althoughthe neural circuitry underlying the production of acoustic signals is different in frogs, songbirds,bats, and humans, each involves a set of dedicated pathways designed to solve particular problems ofcommunicative efficiency. Such comparative findings form the basis of a conceptual framework forunderstanding the mechanisms underlying communication systems and their evolution.

Mark Konishi is Bing Professor of Behavioral Biology at the California Institute of Technology.