9802812 Pope The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty- four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four-month postdoctoral research visit by Dr. Denise S. Pope to work with Dr. John Christy at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama. Dr. Pope will use fiddler crabs as a model system to study the theories of sexual selection and animal communication to understand the evolution of sexually dimorphic exaggerated traits. Using signal detection theory, she will study the claw waving display of male fiddler crabs, which is done to threaten other males and to attract females for mating. Her studies will use a video playback technique for the presentation of stimuli. She will present females with videos of displays produced by males in different situations, and against different backgrounds. This test will distinguish between female preference for detectability and female preference for a more exaggerated signal. Dr. Christy has studied sexual selection and communication in fiddler crabs for twenty years. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has well-equipped facilities, and provides a location where these crabs are found in the greatest diversity and where the genus is thought to have originated. ***
