Conference: The Role of Mechanosensation in Robust Movement Control

This award funds a symposium at the January 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) that explores how mechanical sensors are integrated into movement control systems and impact behavioral performance. Many animals exhibit extraordinarily predictable behaviors even in the face of extreme external disruptions.

What sensory signals do these organisms receive that allow them to consistently coordinate their motor responses in spite of these disturbances? The symposium will examine a variety of ideas regarding the role of mechanosensation in animal behavior and encourage researchers working across organisms to synthesize ideas and develop a shared research agenda for the field.

The symposium features a diverse array of speakers from different types of institutions that represent multiple career stages, and their talks and published articles will collectively cover mechanosensation in vertebrate and invertebrate animals, as well as robotic “organisms.” In addition to the main symposium talks, a scheduled complementary session will feature student speakers, who will join discussions with symposium participants during a working lunch meeting. The symposium speakers will contribute articles for a special issue of the SICB journal, Integrative and Comparative Biology.

The symposium organizers are arranging a lightning talk series in collaboration with Longhorn TIES (Transition, Inclusion, Empower, Success), a program at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) dedicated to supporting students who identify as being on the autism spectrum or neurodiverse. The goal of this outreach event is to introduce the students to a diverse group of scientists studying a range of scientific questions related to the Biological Sciences.

Research on mechanosensation has recently progressed rapidly, and this timely symposium brings together researchers to compare and contrast their different systems, share experimental advice and methods, and inspire collaborative, cross-species approaches to understanding the role of mechanosensation in movement control systems. The major goals of the symposium are to encourage a comparative approach to understanding how mechanosensors are incorporated in organismal control systems, and to develop an evolutionary approach to understanding the basic biology of mechanosensors, especially considering the potential for analogous (or homologous) sensor structure and function across taxa.

It is hoped that the symposium participants will develop a shared research agenda for the field and that participation in the symposium will collectively inspire researchers to take on collaborative projects that include species outside of their chosen model system and that cross biological scales. Symposium results will be disseminated through publication in the SICB journal, Integrative and Comparative Biology, and the outreach event to students at the University of Texas Austin.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.