Campus launches Center for Animal Behavior

"We are now world leaders in the area of animal behavior," says Marler, the center's founding director. "Davis has an extraordinary configuration of faculty representing all aspects of the discipline, and the very best students in the world working on the subject." Yet, he explains, the campus both gains and loses in a situation in which animal behaviorists are dispersed throughout many different academic units.

"We suffer from the lack of a home where all can gather and talk science, and meet the many distinguished visitors from around the world who come to Davis as the mecca for students of behavior. This is one of several important needs that we intend the new Center for Animal Behavior to fulfill, both unifying us more productively for the present, and preparing us for new enterprises in the future," he says.

Right: Professor Emeritus Peter Marler is the founding director of the new Center for Animal Behavior. He has spent more than four decades studying how animals, primarily birds and primates, communicate and how their methods of communication develop. His research has led to fundamental insights into memory and learning and into the importance of social and auditory experiences in shaping communicative skills.

Marler's appointment as director is one of a number of initial steps taken to launch the center. Others include the creation of central offices in Briggs Hall for the director and his assistant, and the location of space for conferences and seminars. Computer workstations are also being established for students to process and analyze research video and audiotapes. These first steps will pave the way for the development of a broad range of activities to be coordinated by the center, including a weekly seminar course, an annual workshop in an interdisciplinary area of animal behavior, and mini-grant awards to students for interdisciplinary research.

The Center for Animal Behavior is one of three campuswide centers in biology administered by the Division of Biological Sciences. The Centers for Population Biology and Neuroscience were established in 1989 and 1990, respectively.