Events Detail

Speaker:
Nozomi Nishiumi

Navigation strategies in animals under adversarial situations

Navigations of animals have long been studied as a major topic in animal behavior. In recent years, the navigation between predator and prey has been actively studied. Navigations of both sides, i.e. navigation of predators to reach prey and navigation of prey to reach a safe zone without being captured, must be designed to outperform the opponent's navigation and are considered to have become highly sophisticated through a history of predator-prey coevolution. To reveal the quintessence of their navigation strategies, I have studied navigation behaviors of predators and prey in several taxa. In this seminar, I will first introduce navigation strategies in frogs against predator snakes, and bats towards prey moths. With regard to frogs, it was revealed that they adjust the timing of when to begin fleeing against snakes, thereby dodging the snake's attack and reaching a safe zone, or sacrificing other frogs as decoys. With regard to bats, the integration of multiple sensing and flight tactics was found to keep complex fleeing moths consistently within their sensing range. I will also introduce my experimental system that examines the effectiveness of animals’ navigation strategies, by making interactions between real animals and virtual animals implemented with the reactive motion control. Throughout this seminar, I hope to convey the message that the study of predator-prey navigation strategies will be further developed based on a wide range of academic disciplines, including biology and engineering.

Dr Nishiumi did his PhD at Kyoto University in Japan, where he studied the anti-predator strategies of frogs. In 2015, he started a study to measure predatory and escape behavior of fish as a post-doc at Nagasaki University, Japan. Since 2017, he has studied navigation strategies in fish, flying insects, and pigeons as a grant leader in National Institute for Basic Biology. He was awarded the Journal of Ethology 2015 Editors’ Choice Award and the Prize from Japan Ethological Society 2021.