Ecological decision-making: From circuit elements to emerging principles

The interactions an animal has with its prey, predators, neighbors, and competitors are known as ecological interactions. Making effective decisions during ecological interactions poses fundamental challenges for the nervous system. Among these are the need to filter relevant information out of complex and ever-changing sensory scenes, to balance competing objectives, and to generate robust behavior amid the strong mutual feedbacks that occur during interactions with other animals. Here, I review recent advancements in the study of ecological decision-making. Using research with fishes, I illustrate how knowledge of ethology and brain circuitry are converging to yield a more holistic understanding of how the brain solves these problems to produce robust sequences of natural behavior.