Faux frogs: multimodal signalling and the value of robotics in animal behaviour

Abstract

A long-standing interest in animal behaviour has been to understand chains of stimulus–response. One approach to understanding the links between stimulus and response has been to use models (animal replicas) in which details of a behaviour can be manipulated to determine how such manipulations influence the response of the focal animal. Static models ([Tinbergen and Perdeck, 1950], [Searcy, 1998] and [McLister, 2003]), manually controlled robots ([Brown and Kiely, 1974] and [Taylor et al., 2007]) and motorized static models ([MacLaren et al., 2004] and [Gumm et al., 2006]) have been effective in eliciting responses from animals in behavioural studies. The current availability, however, of low-cost electric motors, easily designed circuit boards and a wide variety of sculpting materials has created even greater possibilities for developing robots as tools in studies of animal behaviour. In recent years a number of workers have capitalized on these technologies which are now increasingly being employed in controlled experiments (Knight 2005). In some research programmes, robots have been developed as a physical algorithm to test hypotheses about the mechanisms of behaviour (reviewed in: Webb 2000). In these studies, biological systems are modelled with robots and the behaviour of the robots is analysed in response to some stimulus input. Examples of these include studies of navigation (Lambrinos et al. 2000) and chemical trail following ([Kuwana and Shimoyama, 1998] and [Grasso et al., 2000]). Robotics have also been used as tools in studies where the robot interacts with living animals and it is this arena in which we are particularly interested. Robotic technology has been used to test hypotheses regarding mate selection (robotic bowerbird: Patricelli et al. 2006), male–male territorial interactions (electromechanical model dart-poison frog: [Narins et al., 2003] and [Narins et al., 2005]), social aggregation (robotic brush-turkey chick: Göth & Evans 2004; robotic cockroach: Halloy et al., 2007 J. Halloy, G. Sempo, G. Caprari, C. Rivault, M. Asadpour, F. Tâche, I. Saïd, V. Durier, S. Canonge, J.M. Amé, C. Detrain, N. Correll, A. Martinoli, F. Mondada, R. Siegwart and J.L. Deneubourg, Social integration of robots into groups of cockroaches to control self-organized choices, Science 318 (2007), pp. 1155–1158. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (2) Halloy et al. 2007), predator avoidance (robotic ground squirrels: Rundus et al. 2007), communication of foraging locations (mechanical honeybee: [Michelsen et al., 1989] and [Michelsen et al., 1992]) and signal matching, territorial and sexual communication (robotic sagebrush lizard: [Martins et al., 2005] and [Smith and Martins, 2006]). The success of robotics in studies involving a wide variety of taxa indicates that this technology can provide an avenue for fruitful research in behaviour and communication.