Behavior and Ethology Commons^™

Visual Ecology: Sensing The Social World, Elliott P. Steele

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Social animals, and even solitary animals, must at different points in their life actively search for and locate conspecifics within their environment, using one or multiple senses. One sense in particular, vision, can provide some of the most spatially detailed and temporally rapid information about the environment. Yet, the surrounding environment can also severely challenge animals’ abilities to find fellow conspecifics. Furthermore, once an animal successfully locates conspecifics, it must then make key decisions about when and where to enter group formations, decisions which may strongly impact their access to socially-acquired resources. Even after an animal has positioned itself within …