The Golden Age of Comparative Neuroethology on Display in Japan

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One of those early pioneers of neuroethology, Masakazu (Mark) Konishi, was honored at this conference with a symposium in his name. There were four speakers who each had worked with Mark at some point in their careers and whose works were shaped by Mark’s insight. Mark is best known for his work on sound localization in barn owls and for his work on birdsong learning. Mark was also honored with the awarding of the first Konishi Neuroethology Research Awards to four young investigators. It was wonderful that Mark was able to attend this conference and particularly that he was accompanied by Walter Heiligenberg’s son. Walter was an early pioneer of work on the jamming avoidance response in electric fish. Other icons in neuroethology were honored at this conference by being named Fellows of the International Society for Neuroethology. The Fellows inducted this year were Franz Huber, Eve Marder, Ed Kravitz, Tom Collett, Darcy Kelley, and Tom Cronin. They were chosen for their research, their leadership in education and outreach, and their extraordinary service to the field of neuroethology. Now, decades after the first ICN, we see that there is still active research on classic neuroethological organisms, which, in addition to owls and electric fish, includes bats, honeybees, crickets, and lampreys. However, there is a far greater diversity of organisms than ever before, including: I recently returned from an incredible trip to Sapporo, Japan, where I attended the eleventh International Congress of Neuroethology (ICN) (http://www.icn2014. jp/). The very first ICN was also held in Japan in 1986. There were 304 participants at that first congress (142 from overseas and 162 from Japan). Twenty-eight years later, there were 630 participants with 416 coming from 21 countries outside of Japan. This was my first visit to Japan and I learned firsthand about the culture of elegance, grace, and perfection. This applied to the conference itself, which was incredibly well managed. Neuroethology is of course the study of the neural basis of natural behavior. Researchers in the field often point to Krogh’s principle as a justification for studying the neural basis of behavior in ‘non-model’ organisms, namely that an organism should be chosen because it is the easiest with which to study a particular problem [Krogh, 1929]. Thus, barn owls were chosen for studying sound localization because of their champion abilities at catching prey with passive hearing [Konishi, 2003]. Similarly, the jamming avoidance response was studied in the electric fish because it offered an opportunity to explore sensorimotor integration of an entire behavior [Heiligenberg, 1980]. The field of neuroethology became synonymous with these specialized animals, their abilities, and the pioneering researchers who studied them. Published online: October 23, 2014