Abstract

The world around us is full of chemical signals, the invisible messengers that drives species interactions, behaviour, intraspecies communication and coevolution between species. As primarily visual creatures, our research is often driven by signals we can perceive easily, and we remain relatively ignorant of the role that scent plays in these processes. In this seminar our first speaker will • describe two major ways in which we can study these invisible messengers: analytical chemistry and electrophysiology and , • explain how we can increase our understanding of the invisible chemical world that surrounds us and its role in behaviour, ecology, and evolutionary processes. Our second speaker will • describe how interactions between species promote their diversification, • talk about how we can unravel the chemical mediation of species coevolution by using analytical chemistry, feeding assays and gene expression analyses.