Using remote seminars to teach animal behavior

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, numerous academic conferences and seminars were moved online. Some remote (online) seminars have the aim to be maintained permanently after the pandemic, offering weekly opportunities for scientists, postdocs, and students to learn about research and to improve global networking. Remote seminars are a good option to promote inclusion and diversity, allowing students worldwide to participate and to interact with researchers from a broad cultural and ethnic background. Capitalizing on our experience with the ongoing International Remote Seminar on Frontiers in Social Evolution (FINE), we propose four teaching tools that can be integrated into undergraduate and graduate courses and that can be adapted for use with most remote seminar series. We make recommendations for the use of: (i) Certified remote seminar attendance. (ii) Relevant articles from the primary literature. (iii) Teaching slides, and (iv) Recorded seminars. Our aims are to promote and facilitate the use of the proposed teaching tools in Animal Behavior and related courses, and to encourage other remote seminar organizers to make teaching tools available.