Wouter Halfwerk

Wouter Halfwerk, Associate Professor

w.h.halfwerk@vu.nl

Sensory systems, such as vision or hearing, form the interface between an animal’s interior and exterior environment and their functioning, variability and plasticity is crucial to adapt to a changing world. I want to understand how sensory systems operate, how they evolve and how they mediate ecological interactions. To address these questions I use a highly integrative approach, spanning the fields of sensory ecology, conservation biology, animal communication and evolutionary biology. Historically, most work on sensory biology has taken animals into the lab and applied rigorous techniques to understand how their senses process information. I aim to combine the vast amount of knowledge on sensory biology with evolutionary thinking and I prefer to do this by taking the lab to the field, or when necessary, taking the field into the lab.

This approach allows me to understand the selection pressures acting on, as well as imposed by sensory traits, which I can use to predict whether and how animals adapt to new environments. Most of my work has concentrated on the co-evolution between senders and receivers. Animals emit all sorts of stimuli intentionally (signals) as well as unintentionally (cues) and receivers can perceive these stimuli through a wide range of sensory systems. I study how intended receivers, such as mates or rivals, or unintended receivers, such as predators and parasites perceive these stimuli and how their perception is affected by fluctuating sensory conditions.