Behavioural ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Herbivore cooperation between insect pests can result in substantially greater damage to crops but also constitutes a good target for improved pest control. Liu et al. reveal how the brown plant-hopper and the rice striped stem-borer obtain mutual benefits when feeding on the same rice plant.

    • Qingsong Liu
    • , Xiaoyun Hu
    •  & Yunhe Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Evolutionary arms races can drive adaptations in hosts and parasites as well as among competing parasites. A combination of multi-omics and functional tests identifies a set of genes that allow a parasitic wasp to minimize intraspecific competition by inducing hosts to escape before more wasps can parasitize them.

    • Jiani Chen
    • , Gangqi Fang
    •  & Jianhua Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how individual niches vary can inform ecology and conservation. A study of 45 GPS-tracked white storks across three breeding populations reveals that individual environmental niches are nested, arranged along a specialist-generalist gradient that is highly consistent over time.

    • Ben S. Carlson
    • , Shay Rotics
    •  & Walter Jetz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many species learn through social transmission, which can alter co-evolutionary selection pressures. Experiments involving artificial prey and social networks show that wild birds can learn about unpalatable food by watching others, which helps explain the persistence of costly prey defences despite influxes of naïve juvenile predators.

    • Liisa Hämäläinen
    • , William Hoppitt
    •  & Rose Thorogood

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The parasite causing toxoplasmosis can manipulate prey to behave in ways that promote transmission to the parasite’s definitive feline hosts. The first study consistent with this extended phenotype in the wild finds that infected hyena cubs approach lions more closely than uninfected peers and have higher rates of lion mortality.

    • Eben Gering
    • , Zachary M. Laubach
    •  & Thomas Getty

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An experimental study finds that birds and bats avoid whitewater river noise, and that intense noise reduces bird foraging activity and causes bats to switch hunting strategies. Overlap between noise and song frequency predicts bird declines until high levels where other mechanisms appear important.

    • D. G. E. Gomes
    • , C. A. Toth
    •  & J. R. Barber

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While there is strong evidence that many mutualisms evolved from antagonism, how or why remains unclear. A study combining theory and a data-based model sheds light on how mutualisms evolve without extremely tight host fidelity and how ecological context affects evolutionary outcomes and vice-versa.

    • Christopher A. Johnson
    • , Gordon P. Smith
    •  & Régis Ferrière

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many organisms, including moths, use pheromones to attract mates. A study using multiple genomic tools and gene editing identifies a new, neuronal gene underlying mate preference and shows that signal and response loci are in linkage disequilibrium despite being physically unlinked.

    • Melanie Unbehend
    • , Genevieve M. Kozak
    •  & Erik B. Dopman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studying how songbirds learn songs can shed light on the development of human speech. An analysis of 160 tutor-pupil zebra finch pairs suggests that frequency dependent balanced imitation prevents the extinction of rare song elements and the overabundance of common ones, promoting song diversity within groups and species recognition across groups.

    • Ofer Tchernichovski
    • , Sophie Eisenberg-Edidin
    •  & Erich D. Jarvis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Parasitoids exploit host bodies for reproduction, selecting for host defences. A new host defence is reported, in which adult Drosophila accelerate mating behaviour at the sight of certain parasitoid wasps, mediated by the upregulation of a nervous system gene that encodes a 41-amino acid micropeptide.

    • Shimaa A. M. Ebrahim
    • , Gaëlle J. S. Talross
    •  & John R. Carlson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social animals have sophisticated ways of classifying relationships with conspecifics. Data from 30 years of observations and playback experiments on dolphins with a multi-level alliance system show that individuals form social concepts that categorize conspecifics according to their shared cooperative history.

    • Stephanie L. King
    • , Richard C. Connor
    •  & Simon J. Allen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exactly how some animals use magnetic fields to navigate is a longstanding puzzle. A study using a new behavioural assay and transgenic butterflies finds the cryptochrome gene necessary for inclination-based magnetic sensing, and shows that both antennae and eyes, which express this gene, are magnetosensory organs.

    • Guijun Wan
    • , Ashley N. Hayden
    •  & Christine Merlin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strong social bonds are known to affect pairwise cooperation in primates such chimpanzees. Here, Samuni et al. show that strong social bonds also influence participation in group-level cooperation (collective action in intergroup encounters) using a long-term dataset of wild chimpanzees.

    • Liran Samuni
    • , Catherine Crockford
    •  & Roman M. Wittig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The causes and consequences of social intelligence are challenging to establish. A study on wild cleaner fish reports that large forebrains enable individuals to score higher in a social competence test, suggesting forebrain size is important for complex social decision-making.

    • Zegni Triki
    • , Yasmin Emery
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been hypothesized that domestication can occur through the ‘commensal pathway’ in which the domesticate takes advantage of a niche created as a byproduct by the domesticator. Here, Brooker et al. provide evidence for a commensal domestication process between longfin damselfish and mysid shrimps.

    • Rohan M. Brooker
    • , Jordan M. Casey
    •  & William E. Feeney

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Migration is costly. In the first global analysis of migratory vertebrates, authors report that migratory birds and mammals have faster paces of life than their non-migratory relatives, and that among swimming and walking species, migrants tend to be larger, while among flying species, migrants are smaller.

    • Andrea Soriano-Redondo
    • , Jorge S. Gutiérrez
    •  & Stuart Bearhop

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether and how fish might benefit from swimming in schools is an ongoing intriguing debate. Li et al. conduct experiments with biomimetic robots and also with real fish to reveal a new behavioural strategy by which followers can exploit the vortices shed by a near neighbour.

    • Liang Li
    • , Máté Nagy
    •  & Iain D. Couzin

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    The social intelligence hypothesis predicts that social organisms tend to be more intelligent because within-group interactions drive cognitive evolution. Here, authors propose that conspecific outsiders can be just as important in selecting for sophisticated cognitive adaptations.

    • Benjamin J. Ashton
    • , Patrick Kennedy
    •  & Andrew N. Radford

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The genetic mechanisms underlying mate choice decisions can inform our understanding of speciation. A study on Heliconius butterflies identifies 5 candidate genes that would allow sympatric species to evolve distinct preferences without altering their visual perception of the wider environment.

    • Matteo Rossi
    • , Alexander E. Hausmann
    •  & Richard M. Merrill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Environmental variability is one potential driver of behavioural and cultural diversity in humans and other animals. Here, the authors show that chimpanzee behavioural diversity is higher in habitats that are more seasonal and historically unstable, and in savannah woodland relative to forested sites.

    • Ammie K. Kalan
    • , Lars Kulik
    •  & Hjalmar S. Kühl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nearly 17% of all bird species are hosts to obligate brood parasites like the common cuckoo. Antonson et al. show that parasite species hedge their reproductive bets by outsourcing parental care to a greater variety of host species when the rearing environment for their young is more unpredictable.

    • Nicholas D. Antonson
    • , Dustin R. Rubenstein
    •  & Carlos A. Botero

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anthropogenic stressors affect many aspects of marine organismal health. Here, the authors expose surgeonfish to temperature and pesticide stressors and show that the stressors, separately and in combination, have adverse effects on thyroid signaling, which disrupts several sensory systems and important predation defenses.

    • Marc Besson
    • , William E. Feeney
    •  & David Lecchini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In animal groups, the degree of alignment of individuals could have different benefits and costs for individuals depending on their reliance on private or social information. Here the authors show that in shoals of three-spined sticklebacks, some individuals reach resources faster when groups are disordered, a state which favours reliance on privately acquired information, while other individuals reach resources faster when groups are ordered, allowing them to exploit social information more effectively.

    • Hannah E. A. MacGregor
    • , James E. Herbert-Read
    •  & Christos C. Ioannou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fast metabolisms tend to shorten lifespans by increasing oxidative damage. This study identifies a gene mutation that keeps a key antioxidant response active, possibly allowing Neoaves bird species to avoid the tradeoff between rapid metabolism and longevity that challenges most mammals, including humans.

    • Gianni M. Castiglione
    • , Zhenhua Xu
    •  & Elia J. Duh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Developmental duration is a key life-history trait. Cooney et al. compile data on 3096 bird species to quantify the degree to which phylogenetic history, body size and ecological variables like predation risk or breeding phenology influence variation in developmental duration.

    • Christopher R. Cooney
    • , Catherine Sheard
    •  & Alison E. Wright

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Organisms living on and inside of plants—such as microbes and herbivorous insects—can interact in complex ways. Here the authors show that a plant virus increases the temperature of the plant and also the thermal tolerance of an aphid species feeding on the plant; this change in thermal tolerance also affects competition with another aphid species.

    • Mitzy F. Porras
    • , Carlos A. Navas
    •  & Tomás A. Carlo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cleaner fish can cheat clients for higher rewards but this comes with a risk of punishment. Here, Truskanov et al. show that juvenile cleaner fish can learn by observing adults to behave more cooperatively themselves but also to prefer clients that are more tolerant to cheating.

    • Noa Truskanov
    • , Yasmin Emery
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ecological niche breadth may help explain spatial distribution patterns in animals. In this study on European bats, Alberdi et al. combine DNA metabarcoding and species distribution modelling to show that dietary niche breadth is related to hunting flexibility and broad-scale spatial patterns in species distribution.

    • Antton Alberdi
    • , Orly Razgour
    •  & M. Thomas P. Gilbert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Honeybees have a sophisticated system to communicate foraging locations through a “dance”, but they also share food-related olfactory cues. Here, Hasenjager and colleagues use social network analysis to disentangle how foraging information is transmitted through these systems in different contexts.

    • Matthew J. Hasenjager
    • , William Hoppitt
    •  & Ellouise Leadbeater

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animals can obtain information on predation risk directly from observing predators or indirectly from the alarm calls of others. Here, the authors show that red-breasted nuthatches encode information on risk in their own alarm calls differently depending on the source of the information.

    • Nora V Carlson
    • , Erick Greene
    •  & Christopher N Templeton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pheromones are an essential cue for species recognition and mate selection in many insects including the butterfly Bicyclus anynana. Here the authors show that females with a short social experience of a new male learn preferences for novel pheromone blends, a preference which also occurs in their daughters.

    • Emilie Dion
    • , Li Xian Pui
    •  & Antónia Monteiro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Modelling collective behaviour in different circumstances remains a challenge because of uncertainty related to interaction rule changes. Here, the authors report plasticity in local interaction rules in flocks of wild jackdaws with implications for both natural and artificial collective systems.

    • Hangjian Ling
    • , Guillam E. Mclvor
    •  & Nicholas T. Ouellette

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Compared to motherhood, the molecular changes associated with fatherhood are less understood. Here, the authors investigate gene expression changes associated with paternal care in male stickleback fish, and compare them with patterns in territorial aggression.

    • Syed Abbas Bukhari
    • , Michael C. Saul
    •  & Alison M. Bell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fish Astyanax mexicanus has divergent cave and river-dwelling eco-morphotypes. Here, Hyacinthe et al. show that cave and river fish communicate sonically, but that the sounds produced and the responses elicited in the two morphs depend differently on the social and behavioral context.

    • Carole Hyacinthe
    • , Joël Attia
    •  & Sylvie Rétaux

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The empirical consequences of human explorative strategies are not fully understood. Here the authors find that during undisturbed conditions, more-explorative vessels gained no performance advantage while during a major disturbance event, explorers benefited significantly from less-impacted revenues and were also more likely to continue fishing.

    • Shay O’Farrell
    • , James N. Sanchirico
    •  & Andrew Strelcheck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Random walk movement patterns with specific step size distributions are commonly associated with resource search optimization strategies in mobile organisms. Here, the authors show that clonal expansion of beach grasses follows a Lévy-type step size strategy that optimizes early dune building.

    • Valérie C. Reijers
    • , Koen Siteur
    •  & Tjisse van der Heide

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We know little about the relative contributions of visual and olfactory senses for wild, frugivorous mammals. Here, the authors show that in capuchin monkeys, frequency of olfactory evaluation of fruits is higher when scent production increases with ripening, and among monkeys with red-green colorblindness.

    • Amanda D. Melin
    • , Omer Nevo
    •  & Shoji Kawamura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    For phenotypic plasticity to evolve to a changing world, there must be variation in plasticity. Here, the authors show that whether great tits advance or delay breeding in response to perceived predation risk depends on their personality, linking variation in plasticity with that in personality.

    • Robin N. Abbey-Lee
    •  & Niels J. Dingemanse

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although male genital shape is known to evolve rapidly in response to sexual selection, relatively little is known about the evolution of female genital shape. Here, the authors show that across onthophagine dung beetles, female genital shape has diverged much more rapidly than male genital shape.

    • Leigh W. Simmons
    •  & John L. Fitzpatrick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sociality explains substantial variation in ageing across species, but less is known about this relationship within species. Here, the authors show that female dominant Seychelles warblers with helpers at the nest have higher late-life survival and lower telomere attrition and the probability of having helpers increases with age.

    • Martijn Hammers
    • , Sjouke A. Kingma
    •  & David S. Richardson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neural architecture may be shaped by selection, but is likely also constrained by development. Here, Keesey and colleagues find an inverse relationship between allocation towards visual and olfactory sensory systems across the genus Drosophila, which may reflect a developmental trade-off.

    • Ian W. Keesey
    • , Veit Grabe
    •  & Bill S. Hansson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reversible phenotypic plasticity is expected to be favoured by long lifespan, as this increases the environmental variation individuals experience. Here, the authors develop a model showing how phenotypic plasticity can drive selection on lifespan, leading to coevolution of these traits.

    • Irja I. Ratikainen
    •  & Hanna Kokko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The utility of UV vision for visualizing habitat structure is poorly known. Here, the authors use optical models and multispectral imaging to show that UV vision reveals sharp visual contrasts between leaf surfaces, potentially an advantage in navigating forest environments.

    • Cynthia Tedore
    •  & Dan-Eric Nilsson

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