Student-run speaker series: Alison Barker

On Friday May 12th at 17:00, the student-run speaker series "A spotlight on cooperation" will feature a lecture by Alison Barker, MPI for Brain Research FFM, Germany.

Her presentation, entitled "Linking Communication and Cooperation- Lessons from the naked mole-rat" will be held at MDC-BIMSB 0.61, Hannoversche Straße 28, 10115 Berlin.

The talk will be preceded by a reception with coffee and some snacks at 16:30.

Please register using the following form: https://forms.gle/TapacDFaBdR4C9fx7

Abstract: Naked mole-rats are exceptionally long-lived (reported lifespans > 30 years), highly resistant to cancer and low oxygen conditions and live in colonies organized to support a single breeding female, queen. This type of social behavior is rare among mammals, although commonly found in the social insects: bees, wasps and ants. Yet how naked mole-rats organize and maintain their elaborate social groups is largely unknown. Recent work from Dr. Barker's group identified a critical role for vocal communication in naked mole-rats societies. Using machine learning techniques they developed methods to automatically classify and analyze features of one vocalization type, the soft chirp, a greeting call used by naked mole-rats when they encounter one another in their subterranean habitat. They demonstrated that soft chirps encode information about individual and colony identity, suggesting the possibility of colony specific dialects. In a series of behavioral tests, they found that vocal responses were enhanced to home colony vs. foreign colony audio playbacks and to artificially generated colony-specific dialects. They further demonstrated that these dialects can be learned, as pups that were cross-fostered early in life acquired the dialect of their adoptive colonies. Colony specificity of vocal dialects is controlled in part by the presence of the queen: when the queen was lost the vocal cohesiveness of the colony dialect disintegrated.

Here you can find information about the next appointments!