Abstract
A “big picture” of sensory ecology is developed. The logic of biological investigation and the meaning of behavior and information are briefly addressed along with the importance of information to organisms. Ties between sensory ecology and physiology and behavior are stressed. The value of understanding physical constraints on what is possible is emphasized. The simplest physical environment is that of planktonic organisms living free of any surface, and consequences of physical constraints and biological generalities are described for such organisms, as examples. This provides new insights into why small bacteria are not motile, why most chemotactic bacteria are rods employing temporal mechanisms of comparison for gradient detection, why small planktonic animals do not employ pheromones for mate attraction, and explaining why male and female mating types are common among sexually reproducing species.
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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Dusenbery, D.B. (2001). Physical Constraints in Sensory Ecology. In: Barth, F.G., Schmid, A. (eds) Ecology of Sensing. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-22644-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-22644-5_1
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