Finding Food: Neuroethological Aspects of Foraging. Introduction to the Proceedings of a Symposium in Honor of Vincent Gaston Dethier (1915-1993)

摘要

This collection of papers results from a symposium dedicated to Professor Vincent G. Dethier, a pioneer in studies of sensory physiology and feeding behavior. Throughout a remarkable six decades of research and writing, Vince Dethier's interests focused upon the sensory and physiological mechanisms of feeding in caterpillars and flies. His earliest research addressed problems of host-plant selection; this work led him into the study of the chemical sense of caterpillars and from there, launched him into the general area of chemore-ception. While his research primarily addressed consu-matory aspects of feeding, the appetitive components, how animals find their food, always contributed to the development of his ideas. Vince was a man of enormous erudition who brought his breadth of interests into every aspect of his approach to biology. It was our privilege to enjoy this erudition when he joined the biology department at the University of Massachusetts. To honor him we wanted to design a symposium that mirrored the depth and breadth of his scholarship. We decided upon foraging as a unifying theme, one that provided a conceptual framework while still drawing on a wide variety of disciplines. Kamil and Sargent (1981) have stressed the importance of studies of foraging in ethology, psychology, ecology, and anthropology. Certainly it is an area that draws on locomotion, sensory processes (sensitivity, integration, and interpretation), hormonal and other physiological states, learning and memory, and all possible combinations and permutations. The symposium's approach to foraging behavior was primarily sensory, integrating mechanistic, functional, and modeling perspectives.