Behavioural ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change effects on animals are typically measured as decreases or increases in performance, compared to controls. Because both directions can have cascading effects at the ecosystem level, this study conducts a meta-analysis testing for deviations in biological responses using absolute rather than relative changes, showing that impacts on marine animals might have been largely underestimated.

    • Katharina Alter
    • , Juliette Jacquemont
    •  & Paolo Domenici

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selection is expected to act differently on aposematic and cryptic species. Analysis of wing images revealed that camouflaged moths exhibit higher wing pattern variability than aposematic moths, supporting the theory that camouflaged species display more variability, consistent with anti-predator strategy.

    • Ossi Nokelainen
    • , Sanni A. Silvasti
    •  & Johanna Mappes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Prior studies showed that humans are causing species to become more active at night. Here the authors show that this trend is not consistent across hyperdiverse wildlife communities, as camera trap surveys in Southeast Asia show that responses depend on species traits and do not affect the temporal overlap of biotic interactions.

    • Samuel Xin Tham Lee
    • , Zachary Amir
    •  & Matthew Scott Luskin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of cicadas is unclear due to a lack of understanding of transitional features. Here, the authors assess adult and nymph mid-Cretaceous cicadas, to elucidate their morphological evolution and identify evidence of the origins of cicada sound-generation and subterranean lifestyle.

    • Hui Jiang
    • , Jacek Szwedo
    •  & Bo Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although intraspecific dominance hierarchies are common, large scale interspecific dominance hierarchies are unknown. Using data from hundreds of avian species, the authors find that species that are more familiar with each other engage in less aggression and the aggression is resolved more directly.

    • Gavin M. Leighton
    • , Jonathan P. Drury
    •  & Eliot T. Miller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Even in the absence of apparent genetic and environmental differences, substantial behavioral individuality emerges. This study demonstrates that such seemingly stochastic variation in a clonal fish species translates into predictable differences in life-history measures and ultimately fitness.

    • Ulrike Scherer
    • , Sean M. Ehlman
    •  & Max Wolf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Parental care in birds includes diverse behaviours but the variation in care from each parent across the breeding cycle and between species is unclear. Here, the authors study 1533 bird species, finding different patterns across breeding stages, and that species with strong sexual selection or paternity uncertainty tend to show female-biased care.

    • Daiping Wang
    • , Wenyuan Zhang
    •  & Xiang-Yi Li Richter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is still no consensus on the factors favouring the evolution of same-sex sexual behaviour in mammals. This study presents evidence that it is a widespread behaviour that has evolved repeatedly in mammals, and that may play an adaptive role in bonding and conflict resolution.

    • José M. Gómez
    • , A. Gónzalez-Megías
    •  & M. Verdú

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanisms behind the negative effects of social isolation on social species are unclear. Here, the authors examine colonies of carpenter ants, finding that behavioral, physiological, and lifespan changes may be caused by oxidative stress.

    • Akiko Koto
    • , Makoto Tamura
    •  & Laurent Keller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Individuals may benefit from adjusting their social relationships strategically in response to changing conditions, but evidence in wild animals is limited. Using an automated field experiment, the authors show that wild jackdaws learn to modify their social interactions to maximise foraging rewards, while retaining valuable long-term relationships.

    • Michael Kings
    • , Josh J. Arbon
    •  & Alex Thornton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Workers in social insects such as honey bees, bumble bees, and ants are expected to spend their lives helping their mother reproduce. Here the authors show that workers of several bumble bee species can in fact mate and lead colonies of their own.

    • Mingsheng Zhuang
    • , Thomas J. Colgan
    •  & Jilian Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Behaviour drives infection risk in social groups. Here, Li et al. show that depending on the behavioural role of clonal ants in a colony, genetically identical individuals face vastly different risks of becoming infected with parasitic nematodes.

    • Zimai Li
    • , Bhoomika Bhat
    •  & Yuko Ulrich

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Birdsong is simultaneously repetitive and highly diverse. Sierro et al. resolve this apparent paradox through experiments in blue tits showing that consistent repetition is a fitness indicator, while song diversity reduces habituation during singing displays.

    • Javier Sierro
    • , Selvino R. de Kort
    •  & Ian R. Hartley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cooperative disease defense is part of group-level collective behavior. Here, the authors explore individual decisions, finding that garden ants increase grooming highly infectious individuals when they perceive a high pathogen load and suppress grooming after having been groomed by nestmates.

    • Barbara Casillas-Pérez
    • , Katarína Boďová
    •  & Sylvia Cremer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Syntax is a key feature distinguishing human language from other animal communication systems. Here, Leroux et al. show that chimpanzees produce a compositional syntactic-like structure, suggesting syntax might be evolutionary ancient and potentially already present in our last common ancestor with chimpanzees.

    • Maël Leroux
    • , Anne M. Schel
    •  & Simon W. Townsend

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The degree to which species tolerate human disturbance contributes to shape human-wildlife coexistence. Here, the authors identify key predictors of avian tolerance of humans across 842 bird species from open tropical ecosystems.

    • Peter Mikula
    • , Oldřich Tomášek
    •  & Tomáš Albrecht

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study examined the movements of mule deer in western Wyoming, which began their spring migration considerably mismatched from the wave of green-up that propagates from low-elevation winter ranges to high-elevation summer ranges. They show that individual deer compensated for phenological mismatches with the green wave en route by accelerating or decelerating their movement.

    • Anna C. Ortega
    • , Ellen O. Aikens
    •  & Matthew J. Kauffman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The opportunity for sexual selection is a key evolutionary parameter but we know little about its temporal dynamics. Using data from multiple animal species the authors show that this metric varies rapidly through time and that simulations should be used to avoid substantial misinterpretation.

    • Rômulo Carleial
    • , Tommaso Pizzari
    •  & Grant C. McDonald

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flowers are well known for attracting pollinators with visual and olfactory displays. Here, the authors show that in a nocturnal, desert pollination system, flower choice by pollinators is also mediated by floral humidity.

    • Ajinkya Dahake
    • , Piyush Jain
    •  & Robert A. Raguso

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bacteria respond to nutrients and other compounds via chemotaxis, but little is known of their responses to antibiotics. By tracking cells in antibiotic gradients, the authors show that surface-attached Pseudomonas aeruginosa move towards antibiotics in what appears to be a suicidal attack strategy.

    • Nuno M. Oliveira
    • , James H. R. Wheeler
    •  & Kevin R. Foster

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Division of labour, where members of a group specialise on different tasks, is a central feature of many social organisms. Using a theoretical model, the authors demonstrate that division of labour can emerge spontaneously within a group of entirely identical individuals.

    • Jan J. Kreider
    • , Thijs Janzen
    •  & Franz J. Weissing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Temporal niche partitioning is an important feature of animal communities. Here, Vallejo-Vargas and colleagues analyze standardized camera trap survey data from protected areas across the tropics to investigate diel patterns of forest mammals in relation to body mass and trophic guild.

    • Andrea F. Vallejo-Vargas
    • , Douglas Sheil
    •  & Richard Bischof

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ant and honeybee workers specialize on certain tasks and also on zones within the nest; but how do they avoid straying into the wrong zone? The authors conduct automated tracking experiments following thousands of individuals, revealing that workers use context-dependent rules to navigate inside the nest.

    • Thomas O. Richardson
    • , Nathalie Stroeymeyt
    •  & Laurent Keller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    You’re unique just like everyone else. But when does such individuality appear? Laskowski et al. find that clonal fish show unique behavioral patterns on their first day of life, and these patterns predict their behavior up to at least 10 weeks later.

    • Kate L. Laskowski
    • , David Bierbach
    •  & Max Wolf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Invasive species are a leading driver of global biodiversity loss. Here, the authors show that the process of invasion itself can promote behavioral changes important to the success of widespread invaders, with implications for understanding the effects of alien species on invaded communities.

    • David G. Chapple
    • , Annalise C. Naimo
    •  & Bob B. M. Wong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reproduction in numerous marine organisms is timed to specific moon phases, but the mechanisms for sensing moon phases are incompletely understood. Here the authors report that an ancient, light-sensitive protein L-Cryptochrome in a marine bristle worm can discriminate between sun- and moonlight, enabling the animals to properly decode moon phases.

    • Birgit Poehn
    • , Shruthi Krishnan
    •  & Kristin Tessmar-Raible

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The question of whether women who produce twins are more fertile than other women has been debated. Here, the authors analyze a large dataset of pre-industrial birth outcomes and find evidence against the idea of higher fertility and instead that more births lead to more twinning opportunities.

    • Ian J. Rickard
    • , Colin Vullioud
    •  & Alexandre Courtiol

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using a season-long field manipulation with an established model fish system on the Great Barrier Reef, this study demonstrates that limiting motorboat activity on reefs leads to faster growth and survival of more fish offspring compared to reefs experiencing busy motorboat traffic. Noise mitigation and abatement could therefore present a valuable opportunity for enhancing ecosystem resilience.

    • Sophie L. Nedelec
    • , Andrew N. Radford
    •  & Stephen D. Simpson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The importance of learning for brood parasites is explored using cuckoo catfish. The catfish increase their parasitism success as they gain experience, mainly by improving their social coordination and timing of intrusions to cichlid host spawnings.

    • Holger Zimmermann
    • , Radim Blažek
    •  & Martin Reichard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors show that captive populations of zebra finches, which have been kept in isolation for up to 100 generations, have diverged in song dialect. When individuals singing different dialects are mixed, mating is assortative for song dialect.

    • Daiping Wang
    • , Wolfgang Forstmeier
    •  & Bart Kempenaers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animals often migrate in social groups, but little is known about the social learning of migration behaviours. Here, Byholm et al. analyse high-resolution tracking data from Caspian Terns and reveal that juveniles’ survival and learning of migration routes depend critically on following a parent.

    • Patrik Byholm
    • , Martin Beal
    •  & Susanne Åkesson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    ‘A supergene that underlies variation in male mating phenotypes has consequences for female reproduction. Here, the authors use evolutionary models to show that the rarest variant of this supergene is maintained by disproportionally high male reproductive success.’

    • Lina M. Giraldo-Deck
    • , Jasmine L. Loveland
    •  & Clemens Küpper

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Army ant bridges are a remarkable example of self-assembled living structures. Here, the authors investigate experimentally how army ant bridges respond to unstable ground, revealing how responses emerge from the decentralized actions of individuals.

    • Helen F. McCreery
    • , Georgina Gemayel
    •  & Radhika Nagpal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    ‘In some mammals, matriarchal status can be conferred with androgens. Here, the authors identify effects of androgens that implicate androgen-mediated aggression in female sexual selection in meerkats and intergenerational transmission of masculinised phenotypes in the evolution of meerkat cooperative breeding.’

    • Christine M. Drea
    • , Charli S. Davies
    •  & Tim H. Clutton-Brock

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Learning from one’s own experience, and/or social learning from older individuals, could influence decision-making in migrating birds. Here the authors analyse 16 years of tracking data on whooping cranes to show that whether social or experiential learning is the dominant process in migration timing depends on life stage.

    • Briana Abrahms
    • , Claire S. Teitelbaum
    •  & Sarah J. Converse

  • Article
    | Open Access

    ‘Here, the authors use dummies of different Morpho butterfly species and sexes to investigate behaviour in patrolling butterflies, finding strong reproductive interference between species despite limited gene flow. They finally show that interference is mitigated by temporal partitioning, hence promoting the coexistence of sympatric Morpho species.’

    • Camille Le Roy
    • , Camille Roux
    •  & Violaine Llaurens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Amid climate and land use changes, it is important to identify and monitor hotspots of animal activity where disease transmission can occur. Using experimental and observational methods in an East African savannah, this study shows water sources increase the concentration of faecal-oral parasites in the environment and that this effect is amplified in drier areas and following periods of low rainfall.

    • Georgia Titcomb
    • , John Naisikie Mantas
    •  & Hillary Young

  • 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

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