Using cross-disciplinary knowledge to facilitate advancements in animal communication and science communication research.

Abstract

Although humans may have more nuanced reasons for communicating - e.g. to teach or inform, to share or change opinions or attitudes - all animals engage in communication with members of their own as well as other species, and there are more similarities than differences between non-human and human communication. All communication systems are composed of the same basic elements and all face comparable challenges. In this Commentary, we explore the extent to which research investigating how non-human animals communicate with each other (animal communication) overlaps in questions and approaches with research focused on how humans communicate with each other. We place a special focus on human communication involving scientific content, i.e. science communication. We begin with a brief review of the fields of animal communication and science communication. We next synthesize literature from each field to examine the roles, impacts and potential interactions of communication system elements - signaling environments, signalers, signal form and receivers - on effective communication. We find that research examining animal and human communication, including science communication, often has different emphases. Animal communication research, for example, tends to focus more on the role of the signaling environment through quantification of receiver responses. In contrast, science communication research currently emphasizes relationship building between signalers and receivers, and quantifies aspects of the receiver's psychology. Informed by our cross-disciplinary assessment, we propose potentially productive avenues of future research in both animal communication and science communication.