A mechanistic understanding of chemical signals in the marine environment can lead to deep insights about natural selective pressures driving organism performance and evolution.
Chemistry indeed mediates a variety of essential biological interactions.
Sensory perception of chemical signals, for example, strongly influences predation, courtship and mating, kinship recognition and habitat selection. The study of chemical communication systems has required development of new instrumentation and analytical techniques. These tools are used for identifying the structures and concentrations of bioactive molecules, as well as for measuring their distributions over temporal and spatial scales important to chemosensory information processing. We will address the organization of nervous systems for interpreting chemical and hydrodynamic information. Empirical and mathematical modeling tools will be developed and used to investigate the mechanisms by which unicellular and multicellular organisms exploit chemical and hydrodynamic information to search for valuable resources.