This is a request for support for a one-day symposium entitled """"""""Mechanisms of Mate Choice"""""""" to be held at the annual meeting of the American Society of Zoologists in December 1990. The symposium is intended to gather junior and senior researchers who share a common interest in the proximate mechanisms of intraspecific mate choice and who can discuss their findings in the broader context of sexual selection and the evolution of social behavior. The participants approach their research from several different directions, employing techniques that range through molecular biology, neurophysiology, the analysis of animal learning, and field research in animal behavior. Together their research covers these currently growing, major areas of study into this important problem in animal communication and the neural and experiential control of behavior; the genetic determinants of signal production, reception, and mate choice; the role of early and adult learning on the modulation of mate preferences; physiological properties of sensory systems that bias signal detection and mate choice; and the interaction of natural and sexual selection in generating and sustaining preferences. The symposium will provide a unique opportunity for neuroscience researchers to interact and share their results and ideas with the interdisciplinary audience that normally attends the ASZ annual meeting, and will expose neuroscientists to the animal behavior and evolutionary biology researchers that regularly attend that meeting. Proceedings of the symposium will be published in the American Zoologist.
