This award will provide support to post-doctoral fellows and junior scientists to attend a symposium on Neuroecology at the 2016 Annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. The goal of this symposium is to bring together leading researchers across career stages to discuss the challenges and next steps in understanding how to link neural bases of behavior in natural settings and to natural stimuli. The topics will cover multiple scales of analysis, from molecular and cellular levels up to behavior and ecology. Eighteen invited speakers, chosen based on their creative contributions to the field and their ability to promote fruitful discussions, have confirmed their attendance. The results presented at the meeting will have the potential to guide future developments in understanding the neural mechanisms of sensory and motor processes that mediate ecolologically relevant behaviors.
The intellectual merit of this meeting derives from its small size, which promotes interactions between participants, and the assembly of many top scientists whose research spans neurobiology, animal behavior and ecology. It spans a wide variety of experimental systems and focuses on areas of exceptional activity or promise. This combination leads to fruitful comparative analyses, raises new questions about underlying mechanisms and often leads to new collaborations. The outcomes of the award will include a symposium as part of the larger meeting, oral presentations by students and postdoctoral scholars, a breakout session to synthesize ideas in neuroscience, animal behavior and ecology and publication of the symposium proceedings. This award will also be instrumental in training a new generation of scientists in this interdisciplinary field.
