Animal behaviour articles within Nature Communications

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  • 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

    Parents are faced with the dilemma whether to invest in their current offspring, or potential future young. Here, Engel et al. show that nutritionally-dependent young induce temporary infertility in female burying beetles, which in turn is signalled to the male partner via a hormone-related anti-aphrodisiac.

    • Katharina C. Engel
    • , Johannes Stökl
    •  & Sandra Steiger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animal vocalizations contain distinct elements, but it is not clear whether they convey combined meanings in the same way as human speech. Here, Suzuki et al.show that Japanese great tits can combine different elements of vocal signals so that they have compositional syntax.

    • Toshitaka N. Suzuki
    • , David Wheatcroft
    •  & Michael Griesser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Theory of Mind experiments in animals have not previously discounted the possibility that individuals follow their competitors′ behavioural cues. Here, Bugnyar et al.show that ravens consider the possibility that they are being watched when caching food, even when they cannot see a conspecific competitor.

    • Thomas Bugnyar
    • , Stephan A. Reber
    •  & Cameron Buckner

  • 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

    Ex situ conservation breeding programmes for endangered species are expensive, and not always guaranteed to succeed. Here, Martin-Wintle et al.show that when captive giant pandas are given the opportunity to choose their preferred mate, copulation and birth rates increase significantly.

    • Meghan S. Martin-Wintle
    • , David Shepherdson
    •  & Ronald R. Swaisgood

  • 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

    Weakly electric fish species use low-voltage to sense their surroundings, whereas a few strongly electric species use high-voltage as a weapon. Here the author shows that electric eels cross this boundary, using high-voltage simultaneously as a stunning weapon and as an electrical radar system to track fast-moving prey.

    • Kenneth C. Catania

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multilevel societies are comprised of hierarchically nested levels of social organization, but how they arise is not well understood. Here Cantor et al. find that the emergence of sperm whale clans is more likely to be driven by cultural transmission of acoustic repertoires than via stochastic processes.

    • Maurício Cantor
    • , Lauren G. Shoemaker
    •  & Hal Whitehead

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Corollary discharges inform the central nervous system about impending motor activity. Here, Chagnaud et al. show that, in Xenopustadpoles, shared efferent neural pathways to the inner ear and lateral line adjust the sensitivity of sensory afferents during locomotor activity.

    • Boris P. Chagnaud
    • , Roberto Banchi
    •  & Hans Straka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Group conformity is crucial for collective behaviours, but may decrease overall responsiveness to external cues. Here the authors show that load-carrying ant groups function at a transition between ballistic and random motions, where the influence of informed individuals is maximized.

    • Aviram Gelblum
    • , Itai Pinkoviezky
    •  & Ofer Feinerman

  • Article |

    How animals distinguish family members from unrelated conspecifics is not fully understood. Here Levréro et al.show that although the structure of mandrill vocalisations can be modulated by their social environment, it still contains information that may be used to recognise unfamiliar relatives.

    • F. Levréro
    • , G. Carrete-Vega
    •  & M.J.E. Charpentier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Defense against environmental threats is essential for survival, yet the neural circuits mediating innate defensive behaviours are not completely understood. Here the authors demonstrate that descending projections from the auditory cortex to the midbrain mediate innate, sound-evoked flight behaviour.

    • Xiaorui R. Xiong
    • , Feixue Liang
    •  & Li I. Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the olfactory system, odourants typically evoke spiking responses in neurons that are both spatially and temporally structured. Here, the authors demonstrate that odour identity is encoded purely by the combinations of neurons activated and is insensitive to changes in temporal structure.

    • Debajit Saha
    • , Chao Li
    •  & Baranidharan Raman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The velvet worm emits a rapidly oscillating jet of proteinaceous slime to capture prey. Here, Concha et al. combine high-speed videography and a physical simulacrum to establish that this passive mechanism is the result of elastohydrodynamic instability during high-speed flow through the oral papillae.

    • Andrés Concha
    • , Paula Mellado
    •  & Julián Monge-Nájera

  • Article |

    Echolocating bats possess an organized map of echo delay in the auditory cortex. Bartenstein et al. investigate the influence of echo-acoustic flow information on the organization of the cortical map, and find that dynamic adaptation of the map is dependent on situation-specific sensory input.

    • Sophia K. Bartenstein
    • , Nadine Gerstenberg
    •  & Uwe Firzlaff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many pelagic fishes and squids live at ocean depths below the euphotic zone but whether surface predators dive to these depths to feed on them is unclear. Here, the authors tag Chilean devil rays and demonstrate that they regularly make dives to at least 1,500 m, suggesting that the rays forage for food at these depths.

    • Simon R. Thorrold
    • , Pedro Afonso
    •  & Michael L. Berumen

  • Article |

    Visual signals that help individuals recognize their own species are predicted to be distinct from those of closely related sympatric species, but evidence for this pattern is scarce. Here, Allen et al.show guenon faces are distinctive, specifically from those of other guenon species they encounter.

    • William L. Allen
    • , Martin Stevens
    •  & James P. Higham

  • Article |

    Cardiac function can limit high-temperature tolerance in fish. Here, Antilla et al.show similar cardiac responses to warming for two wild Atlantic salmon populations with different environmental temperatures, which suggests that cardiac plasticity is independent of natural habitat.

    • Katja Anttila
    • , Christine S. Couturier
    •  & Anthony P. Farrell

  • Article |

    It is unclear how birds differentiate their own eggs from cuckoo’s eggs that parasitize their nests. Here, the authors develop a computer vision tool that simulates how brains process pattern information and show that cuckoos’ hosts have evolved unique egg patterns to distinguish their own eggs from a cuckoo’s.

    • Mary Caswell Stoddard
    • , Rebecca M. Kilner
    •  & Christopher Town

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social intelligence requires the understanding of third-party relations, which is known to occur in humans and primates. Here, Massen et al.show that ravens respond differently to sound recordings of dominance interactions between other ravens, suggesting that ravens also understand third-party relations.

    • Jorg J. M. Massen
    • , Andrius Pašukonis
    •  & Thomas Bugnyar

  • Article |

    Marine cone snails use venom for defence and predation. Here, Dutertre et al.show that cone snails produce structurally and functionally distinct venoms for each purpose and that defence toxins are potent on fish and mammalian targets, suggesting that they have evolved specifically for protection.

    • Sébastien Dutertre
    • , Ai-Hua Jin
    •  & Richard J. Lewis

  • Article |

    Communicative persistence is a key indicator of intentionality in humans. Here Roberts et al. show that two language-trained chimpanzees can dynamically and flexibly use persistent intentional communication to guide a naive experimenter to a food item hidden in a large outdoor enclosure.

    • Anna Ilona Roberts
    • , Sarah-Jane Vick
    •  & Charles R. Menzel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cuckoo eggs mimic those of their hosts to evade rejection. Here, the authors demonstrate that African cuckoo finch females combine both mimicry and a strategy of repeatedly parasitizing the same host nests to increase success by creating uncertainty in host defenses.

    • Martin Stevens
    • , Jolyon Troscianko
    •  & Claire N. Spottiswoode

  • Article |

    Vocal learning is a feature that is specific to some species of mammals and birds, including oscine songbirds. Liu et alstudy the vocal, non-learning, eastern phoebe suboscine, and find that it uses the forebrain to control the vocal-motor system, similar to vocal learning oscines.

    • Wan-chun Liu
    • , Kazuhiro Wada
    •  & Fernando Nottebohm

  • Article |

    The adaptive significance of predation on conspecifics in non-carnivorous species is unclear. Here Vijendravarma et al. show that predatory cannibalism in Drosophila larvae has hallmarks of a functional behaviour, is genetically variable, and is favoured during experimental evolution under nutritional stress.

    • Roshan K. Vijendravarma
    • , Sunitha Narasimha
    •  & Tadeusz J. Kawecki

  • Article |

    Referential gestures such as pointing direct attention towards an object and have only been observed in apes and ravens. Vail et al. show that fish signal to indicate the location of hidden prey to hunting partners, demonstrating that referential gestures are not restricted to large-brained species.

    • Alexander L. Vail
    • , Andrea Manica
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article |

    Inhibition of return describes a mechanism in humans and monkeys whereby the visual detection of recently attended objects or locations is impaired. Gabay et al.find that inhibition of return is also present in archer fish, meaning that a fully developed cortex is not needed for this mechanism.

    • Shai Gabay
    • , Tali Leibovich
    •  & Ronen Segev

  • Article |

    Biologists have struggled to explain the existence of sex-role reversal since Darwin first formulated his theory of evolution. Liker et al.show for the first time that sex roles are predicted by adult sex ratio in wild populations of birds: sex-role reversal emerges at male-biased adult sex ratios.

    • András Liker
    • , Robert P. Freckleton
    •  & Tamás Székely

  • Article |

    Although theory indicates that deception and punishment are successful social strategies, there is little evidence for either in the wild. This study presents the first systematic evidence of tactical deception and punishment of reproductive cheating in a wild primate, the gelada (Theropithecus gelada).

    • Aliza le Roux
    • , Noah Snyder-Mackler
    •  & Thore J. Bergman

  • Article |

    In alloparental brood care, individuals help raise the offspring of others and it is thought that high relatedness between the helpers and recipients is needed. In contrast, Zöttlet al. find that, in cooperatively breeding cichlids, unrelated subordinate females provide more alloparental care than related ones.

    • Markus Zöttl
    • , Dik Heg
    •  & Michael Taborsky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tuberous sclerosis complex is an autosomal dominant cognitive disorder caused by mutations affecting TSCgenes. Sato and colleagues examine tuberous sclerosis complex mutant mice and find that the behavioural and anatomical abnormalities can be reversed by inhibiting rapamycin-sensitive signalling pathways, even in adulthood.

    • Atsushi Sato
    • , Shinya Kasai
    •  & Masashi Mizuguchi

  • Article |

    Spider webs consist of scaffolding silk, which supports the cobweb, and gumfoot silk, which can detach easily from the web upon contact with prey. Here, these different mechanical demands are shown to be met by silk attachments of two distinct architectures using the same pyriform silk secretions.

    • Vasav Sahni
    • , Jared Harris
    •  & Ali Dhinojwala

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether humans are the only animals with cultural behaviour remains an open question in behavioural research. Here, a network analysis of the social preferences among bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia finds that tool-using dolphins prefer others like themselves, suggesting the presence of cultural behaviour.

    • Janet Mann
    • , Margaret A. Stanton
    •  & Lisa O. Singh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus) use their antennae for orientation during their autumnal migration. Guerra and colleagues differentially disrupt clock gene expression in each antenna and find that the individual outputs are integrated and processed to allow precise control of orientation behaviour.

    • Patrick A. Guerra
    • , Christine Merlin
    •  & Steven M. Reppert

  • Article |

    Adars are adenosine deaminases that act on RNAs, including those encoding proteins involved in neuronal transmission and also Adar RNA. Here, Savvaet al. engineered knock-in Drosophila mutants with altered Adar autoediting and found that this changed the spectrum of adenosine deamination and Drosophilabehaviour.

    • Yiannis A. Savva
    • , James E.C Jepson
    •  & Robert A. Reenan

  • Article |

    Bats use a process known as echolocation to measure the distance of an object by echo delay. Here, studies in newborn bats reveal that echo delay tuning of neurons in the auditory cortex is present at birth rather than acquired as a result of echolocation experience.

    • Manfred Kössl
    • , Cornelia Voss
    •  & Marianne Vater

  • Article |

    Some animals find the same odorant attractive at low concentrations and repulsive at high concentrations, but how this discrimination occurs is unclear. UsingCaenorhabditis elegans as a model system, Yoshida et al. show that different sets of sensory neurons respond to low and high concentrations of odours.

    • Kazushi Yoshida
    • , Takaaki Hirotsu
    •  & Takeshi Ishihara

  • Article |

    Animals track odour trails to find food, a mate or to steer clear of danger. Bhalla and colleagues combine behavioural and physiological measurements to show that rats can track surface-borne odours with near-optimal sampling and are able to predict the path direction on encountering a bifurcation.

    • Adil Ghani Khan
    • , Manaswini Sarangi
    •  & Upinder Singh Bhalla

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