Behavioural ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although components of animal mating signals are often studied separately, many animals produce complex multimodal displays. Here, the authors show that the courtship display of male broad-tailed hummingbirds consists of synchronized motions, sounds, and colors that occur within just 300 milliseconds.

    • Benedict G. Hogan
    •  & Mary Caswell Stoddard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A challenge for mutualists is that partner cue reliability is often low. Here, the authors show that though fruit brightness is weakly predictive of nutritional content, the diets of birds (e.g. migrants vs. residents) are structured by fruit brightness in alignment with expected nutritional needs.

    • Jörg Albrecht
    • , Jonas Hagge
    •  & Nina Farwig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is some evidence that social context can mediate the progression of cancers. Here, the authors show that Drosophila flies housed in social isolation experienced faster cancer tumor progression than flies in groups, and that flies select for social environments that minimize cancer risk.

    • Erika H. Dawson
    • , Tiphaine P. M. Bailly
    •  & Frederic Mery

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Islands may impose a distinct set of selective pressures, leading to the repeated evolution of certain traits. Here, Sayol et al. compare brain sizes of more than 1900 bird species in a phylogenetic context, finding a consistent trend for in situ evolution of increased brain size in island birds.

    • Ferran Sayol
    • , Philip A. Downing
    •  & Daniel Sol

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of cooperation depends on social structure, which may evolve in response. Here, Akçay models coevolution between cooperation and social network formation strategies, showing that coevolutionary feedbacks lead cooperation to collapse unless constrained by costs of social connections.

    • Erol Akçay

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biases in adult sex ratio (ASR) are common, yet their causes and consequences are not well understood. Here, the authors analyse data from >6000 individuals of five shorebird species, showing that sex differences in juvenile survival drive ASR variation and biased ASR is associated with uniparental care.

    • Luke J. Eberhart-Phillips
    • , Clemens Küpper
    •  & Oliver Krüger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How do social insect colonies regulate tasks after the developmental stage and in response to changing environments? Here, Crall et al. use automated individual tracking to reveal that task switching after a major colony disturbance helps to maintain collective foraging performance in bumble bees.

    • James D. Crall
    • , Nick Gravish
    •  & Stacey A. Combes

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Gene expression and behaviours are intimately related, and their interactions can play out over timescales from developmental to evolutionary. Here, the authors review how temporal aspects of gene expression mediate behavioural responses to the environment, a key question in behavioural genomics.

    • Clare C. Rittschof
    •  & Kimberly A. Hughes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies of honest signaling have found an inconsistent relationship between carotenoid coloration and individual quality. Here, Weaver et al. compare dietary and biochemically converted carotenoid coloration using meta-analyses and show that converted carotenoids drive relationships with quality measures.

    • Ryan J. Weaver
    • , Eduardo S. A. Santos
    •  & Geoffrey E. Hill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Storytelling entails costs in terms of time and effort, yet it is a ubiquitous feature of human society. Here, Smith et al. show benefits of storytelling in Agta hunter-gatherer communities, as storytellers have higher reproductive success and storytelling is associated with higher cooperation in the group.

    • Daniel Smith
    • , Philip Schlaepfer
    •  & Andrea Bamberg Migliano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animal sexual signals should be conspicuous to mates but not to enemies. Here, the authors show that call site properties can set limits on the attractiveness of male frogs' advertisement call, but that males may balance sexual success over predation risk by digging deeper puddles.

    • Wouter Halfwerk
    • , Judith A. H. Smit
    •  & Michael J. Ryan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biomechanical understanding of animal gait and maneuverability has primarily been limited to species with more predictable, steady-state movement patterns. Here, the authors develop a method to quantify movement predictability, and apply the method to study escape-related movement in several species of desert rodents.

    • Talia Y. Moore
    • , Kimberly L. Cooper
    •  & Ramanarayan Vasudevan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animal coloration and behavior can change seasonally, but it is unclear if visual sensitivity to color shifts as well. Here, Shimmura et al. show that medaka undergo seasonal behavioral change accompanied by altered expression of opsin genes, resulting in reduced visual sensitivity to mates during winter-like conditions.

    • Tsuyoshi Shimmura
    • , Tomoya Nakayama
    •  & Takashi Yoshimura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While the organization of ants within their nest is key for colony function, it remains unknown how ants navigate this dark subterranean environment. Here, Heymanet al. use a series of behavioral tests, chemical analyses, and machine learning to identify chemical landmarks that ants use to distinguish between nest areas.

    • Yael Heyman
    • , Noam Shental
    •  & Ofer Feinerman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Groups of animals tend to solve tasks better than individuals, but it is unclear whether such socially-derived knowledge accumulates over time. Sasaki and Biro demonstrate that homing pigeon flocks progressively improve the efficiency of their routes by culturally accumulating knowledge across generations.

    • Takao Sasaki
    •  & Dora Biro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although common in ants and termites, worker differentiation into physical castes is rare in social bees and unknown in wasps. Here, Grüter and colleagues find a guard caste in ten species of stingless bees and show that the evolution of the guard caste is associated with parasitization by robber bees.

    • Christoph Grüter
    • , Francisca H. I. D. Segers
    •  & Eduardo A. B. Almeida

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In cooperatively breeding species, subordinates help to raise the dominant breeders’ offspring in return for benefits associated with group membership. Here, Grinsted and Field show that the amount of help provided by subordinate paper wasps depends on the availability of alternative nesting options, as predicted by biological market theory.

    • Lena Grinsted
    •  & Jeremy Field

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Environmental variation has been hypothesized to favour the evolution of large brains capable of adjusting behaviour to changing circumstances. Here, Sayolet al. find that across more than 1200 bird species, species with relatively large brains are indeed associated with more variable habitats.

    • Ferran Sayol
    • , Joan Maspons
    •  & Daniel Sol

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The stress-reducing effects of social bonds have been hypothesized to accrue either during stressful events or across daily affiliations. Here, Wittiget al. show that the presence of social partners reduces levels of stress hormones in wild chimpanzees beyond stressful contexts, supporting the latter hypothesis.

    • Roman M. Wittig
    • , Catherine Crockford
    •  & Klaus Zuberbühler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The acoustic properties of vocal signals generally depend on body size, but in some species males have traits that exaggerate the size conveyed by their vocal signals. Here, Charlton and Reby show that among terrestrial mammals, species with sexual selection for large male body size also have more exaggerated vocal signals for their size.

    • Benjamin D. Charlton
    •  & David Reby

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Non-parental helpers contribute to offspring care in many species; however, the amount of care provided varies considerably across species. Here, Green et al. perform a phylogenetic comparative analysis of helping behavior in 36 cooperatively-breeding bird species and find that helper effort increases with relatedness to the recipient of care.

    • Jonathan P. Green
    • , Robert P. Freckleton
    •  & Ben J. Hatchwell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Females tend to invest more than males in caring for offspring, which has been argued to be a consequence of the small initial difference in investment in eggs versus sperm. Here, Fromhage and Jennions formalize this argument mathematically in a model of the evolution of sex roles in parental care.

    • Lutz Fromhage
    •  & Michael D. Jennions

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether and how birds sleep during long-distance flights has remained a mystery. Here, Rattenborg and colleagues show for the first time that frigatebirds can sleep during flight, but do so in remarkably small amounts.

    • Niels C Rattenborg
    • , Bryson Voirin
    •  & Alexei L. Vyssotski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Killer whales have evolved into specialized ecotypes based on hunting strategies and ecological niches. Here, Andrew Foote and colleagues sequenced the whole genome of individual killer whales representing 5 different ecotypes from North Pacific and Antarctic, and show expansion of small founder groups to adapt to specific ecological niches.

    • Andrew D. Foote
    • , Nagarjun Vijay
    •  & Jochen B.W. Wolf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Circadian rhythms synchronize important biological processes, and are thought to primarily be entrained by environmental cycles in light and temperature, with little or no role for social interactions. Here, Fuchikawa et al. show that social cues among honeybees can entrain these rhythms even in the presence of conflicting light-dark cycles.

    • Taro Fuchikawa
    • , Ada Eban-Rothschild
    •  & Guy Bloch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    African wild dogs hunt collaboratively over long distances in grassland plains. Hubel et al. use high-resolution GPS to show that in their remaining habitat of mixed woodland savannah, African wild dogs use multiple opportunistic short-distance hunts, with no evidence of cooperative chasing.

    • Tatjana Y. Hubel
    • , Julia P. Myatt
    •  & Alan M. Wilson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Based on whole genome resequencing of more than 80 wild and domestic yaks from high-altitude Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, this study recovers demographic and genetic processes underlying the domestication of this animal. Qiu et al.also identify genes and associated pathways as candidates for selection during the domestication process.

    • Qiang Qiu
    • , Lizhong Wang
    •  & Jianquan Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Honeybee olfactory systems may experience conflicting cues from communication- and foraging-related odours. Here, Nouvian et al.find that appetitive signals from floral compounds can reduce aggression by blocking the recruitment to defence triggered by alarm pheromones, and that this is not due to odourant masking.

    • Morgane Nouvian
    • , Lucie Hotier
    •  & Judith Reinhard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social-network dynamics can influence biological processes such as information flow, but are difficult to measure in the wild. Here, St Clair et al.track networks of New Caledonian crows to show how the potential for information flow can be influenced by changes in resource distribution.

    • James J. H. St Clair
    • , Zackory T. Burns
    •  & Christian Rutz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diet is a major factor determining the composition of gut microbiota in mammals, while host evolutionary history seems to play an unclear role. Here, Sanderset al. show that baleen whales, which prey on animals, harbour a unique gut microbiome with similarities to those of terrestrial herbivores.

    • Jon G. Sanders
    • , Annabel C. Beichman
    •  & Peter R. Girguis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In species in which females mate with multiple partners, sexual selection acts on male traits involved in mating and fertilization. Here, the authors show that selection acting before and after mating explains a significant component of variance in male reproductive fitness in a livebearing fish.

    • Alessandro Devigili
    • , Jonathan P. Evans
    •  & Andrea Pilastro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sexual reproduction introduces genetic conflict between family members, but direct empirical evidence is lacking. Here, the authors show, in an insect with maternal care, that genetic trade-offs that differ in shape across offspring stages affect the scope for parent–offspring conflict.

    • Mathias Kölliker
    • , Stefan Boos
    •  & Joël Meunier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Long-range synchronization of ecological populations separated by distances greater than their dispersal range is thought only to occur via environmental correlations. Here, Noble et al.show that synchronization can also occur beyond these distances, and is described by the Ising universality class.

    • Andrew E. Noble
    • , Jonathan Machta
    •  & Alan Hastings

  • Article |

    Self-organized patterns at multiple spatial scales are widespread in nature, although little is known about their effect on ecosystem functioning. Here, Liu et al.show how two self-organization processes at individual and ecosystem scale interact to increase the resilience of intertidal mussel beds.

    • Quan-Xing Liu
    • , Peter M. J. Herman
    •  & Johan van de Koppel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of social behaviour is usually explained by kin selection. Here, the authors show that mutual host exploitation by a parasitoid wasp maximizes the average reproductive success of individual females, which suggests that cooperative brood care does not rely on kin selection in these wasps.

    • Xiuyun Tang
    • , Ling Meng
    •  & Baoping Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The earth’s electromagnetic field has a modest effect on the behaviour of Drosophila melanogaster. Here, Fedele et al. use an assessment of climbing behaviour to describe how the blue-light circadian photoreceptor cryptochrome mediates a negative movement response to gravity in flies.

    • Giorgio Fedele
    • , Edward W. Green
    •  & Charalambos P. Kyriacou

  • Article |

    The seas of the Mesozoic were populated by marine reptiles, yet their modes of locomotion remain unknown. Here, Zhang et al. describe seabed tracks made by the paddles of Middle Triassic nothosaurs in southwestern China, which shows that these marine reptiles used their forelimbs for propulsion.

    • Qiyue Zhang
    • , Wen Wen
    •  & Qican Zhang

  • Article |

    Kin selection predicts female-biased sex ratios in haplodiploid eusocial insects because sisters are more related to each other than to their brothers. Here the authors provide evidence that sex ratio bias also occurs in diploid eusocial insects, which do not show asymmetric relatedness.

    • Kazuya Kobayashi
    • , Eisuke Hasegawa
    •  & Kenji Matsuura

  • Article |

    Ecological factors impact cooperative and competitive behaviour, creating social conflict. Here, predictions from a game-theory model together with observations of Taiwan yuhinas—a joint-nesting species where group members are unrelated—show that these birds are more cooperative in unfavourable environmental conditions.

    • Sheng-Feng Shen
    • , Sandra L. Vehrencamp
    •  & Hsiao-Wei Yuan

  • Article |

    Human children use referential gestures such as showing, offering and pointing, which are thought to form the foundation of language skills. Here, evidence is provided of ravens (Corvus corax) using showing and offering to direct other's attention, as an example of referential gesturing in a non-primate lineage.

    • Simone Pika
    •  & Thomas Bugnyar

  • Article |

    The health benefits of massage therapy, like the reduction of stress, have so far only been shown in humans. This study uses modelling to demonstrate that, while visiting cleaner fish to have ectoparasites removed, the physical stimulation also acts to reduce stress in the coral reef fish,Ctenochaetus striatus.

    • Marta C. Soares
    • , Rui F. Oliveira
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article |

    Small endothermic animals often drop their body temperature—a process known as heterothermy—to conserve energy. This study demonstrates heterothermy in king penguin chicks (Aptenodytes patagonicus), a finding unexpected for such large birds, but which may account for the chicks’ fasting capacity of five months.

    • Götz Eichhorn
    • , René Groscolas
    •  & Yves Handrich

  • Article |

    Why some species have evolved to produce sterile individuals working for the benefit of others has yet to be fully explained. Now, a mathematical model of the dynamics of insect colony foundation, growth and death shows that monogamy and haplodiploidy facilitate the evolution of this societal structure.

    • Lutz Fromhage
    •  & Hanna Kokko

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