George Mason University Animal Communication Essay

ForpartA these are the links for the two videos (the videos are less than one minute):

Schizocosa ocreata:

Schizocosa rovneri.

For Part B:

species of choice: Japanese spider crab

Its social environment: large group living

Its physical environment: Sandy and rocky continental shelf and slope

Part A:
In a brief essay fully respond to the following:
• to give you some practice with observation, what communication traits and behaviors did you
notice in the video clip of Schizocosa ocreata and Schizocosa rovneri (describe them separately)?
• how did these compare to the information in the Uetz, et al. (2013) article?
•
correctly use the terms plesiomorphic trait and apomorphic trait in your response
I understand that everyone has a different writing style, but these reflective essays should generally be
about a paragraph long. If you need to write more to fully respond to the prompt, that’s fine. Clarity,
substance, and a complete response are the goals.
Part B:
Now that you’ve chosen your species, you want to be sure that you’ll have sufficient material about its
communication for a presentation.
This assignment is simple. You just need to identify at least two sensory modalities your species
uses to communicate and at least two functions for communication. It’s fine if some signals use
more than one modality – multimodality signals are one of the topics in the Week 4 module.
Functions might include categories like mate identification, courtship, parent-offspring
identification, territory identification, predator alerts, and more.
What I need from you this week is:
•
the species you’ve selected
•
two sensory modalities used by your species
•
two discrete functions for communication in your species
Keep track of the sources you use to find this information, since identifying the sources you’ll use
is the third and final part of your plan for the mid-semester project.
The species I’ve selected:
Two sensory modalities used by this species:
Two discrete functions for communication in this species: