ABSTRACT
Acoustic pattern recognition is a universal behavioral problem for hearing organisms. Especially for organisms that communicate by sound, from the simplest insect to the most sophisticated of vertebrates, there is an awesome challenge in deciding quickly, efficiently, and accurately which sounds must be attended to because they are essential to survival and which can be ignored. Viewed in this way, it is obvious that acoustic pattern recognition abilities do not arise in a vacuum but rather are intimately tied to an organism’s ecology and evolutionary history.
