Zoology articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Southern (SWR) and Northern (NWR) are two subspecies of the White Rhinoceros with the NWR being almost extinct. Here, using assisted reproduction technology, the authors produce and cryopreserve SWR purebred and NWR-SWR hybrid embryos developed to the blastocyst stage, and also generate embryonic stem cell lines, in an attempt to save genes of the NWR.

    • Thomas B. Hildebrandt
    • , Robert Hermes
    •  & Cesare Galli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some animals have multimodal locomotive capabilities to survive in different environments. Inspired by nature, Chen et al. build a centimeter-scaled robot that is capable of walking on water, underwater, on land, and transiting among all three, whose ‘feet’ break water by modifying surface tension.

    • Yufeng Chen
    • , Neel Doshi
    •  & Robert J. Wood

  • Article
    | Open Access

    ‘Conformist bias’, in which individuals learn a common behavioural variant more often than expected by chance, has not been demonstrated convincingly in non-human animals. This study analyses song recordings and models of cultural evolution to show conformist bias in swamp sparrow populations.

    • Robert F. Lachlan
    • , Oliver Ratmann
    •  & Stephen Nowicki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spider aggregate glue avoids failure in humid environments but the fundamental mechanism behind it is still unknown. Here, the authors demonstrate that humidity-dependent structural changes of glycoproteins and sequestering of liquid water by low molecular mass compounds prevents adhesion failure of the glue in humid environments.

    • Saranshu Singla
    • , Gaurav Amarpuri
    •  & Ali Dhinojwala

  • 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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Aquaculture, conservation, and biological research are reliant on the successful breeding of animals in captivity. Here, Farquharson et al. report that, in captivity, captive-born animals have decreased reproductive success compared to wild-born individuals, across diverse species and contexts.

    • Katherine A. Farquharson
    • , Carolyn J. Hogg
    •  & Catherine E. Grueber

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Archaeopteryx had a mix of traits seen in non-flying dinosaurs and flying birds, leading to debate on whether it had powered flight. Here, Voeten et al. compare wing bone architecture from Archaeopteryx and both flying and non-flying archosaurs, supporting that Archaeopteryx had powered flight but with a different stroke than that of modern birds.

    • Dennis F. A. E. Voeten
    • , Jorge Cubo
    •  & Sophie Sanchez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Advances in animal magnetoreception have been limited by a lack of tractable vertebrate laboratory models. Here, the authors demonstrate light-independent magnetoreception in mature zebrafish and medaka, as well as magnetosensitive locomotion in juvenile medaka associated with neuronal activation in the lateral hindbrain.

    • Ahne Myklatun
    • , Antonella Lauri
    •  & Gil G. Westmeyer

  • 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

    Dietary carotenoids have been proposed to have physiological benefits in addition to contributing to coloration. Here, Koch et al. compare immune and antioxidant functions in yellow, carotenoid-rich vs. white, carotenoid-deficient canaries and find no difference, suggesting a limited physiological role of carotenoids.

    • Rebecca E. Koch
    • , Andreas N. Kavazis
    •  & Geoffrey E. Hill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Three alternatives have been proposed for the ecological state of the ancestral snake: fossorial (burrowing), aquatic, or terrestrial. Here, the authors use an integrative geometric morphometric approach that suggests evolution from terrestrial to fossorial in the most recent common ancestor of extant snakes.

    • Filipe O. Da Silva
    • , Anne-Claire Fabre
    •  & Nicolas Di-Poï

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The phylogeny of beetles, which represent ~25% of known extant animal species, has been a challenge to resolve. Here, Zhang et al. infer a time-calibrated phylogeny for Coleoptera based on 95 protein-coding genes in 373 species and suggest an association between the hyperdiversification of beetles and the rise of angiosperms.

    • Shao-Qian Zhang
    • , Li-Heng Che
    •  & Peng Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Physical structure is known to contribute to the appearance of bird plumage through structural color and specular reflection. Here, McCoy, Feo, and colleagues demonstrate how a third mechanism, structural absorption, leads to low reflectance and super black color in birds of paradise feathers.

    • Dakota E. McCoy
    • , Teresa Feo
    •  & Richard O. Prum

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Substantial evidence now supports the idea that the ancestral bat was a small, night flying predator capable of laryngeal echolocation. Here, the authors confirm this hypothesis using phylogenetic comparative analyses and further suggest an underlying tradeoff between echolocation and vision in both ancient and modern species and an association between sensory specialization and diet.

    • Jeneni Thiagavel
    • , Clément Cechetto
    •  & John M. Ratcliffe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ‘pace of life’ depends on both metabolic rate and life history traits; however, whether these evolve similarly in response to the environment is not clear. Here, Auer et al. show parallel evolution of metabolic rate and a suite of life history traits in response to predator environment in Trinidadian guppies.

    • Sonya K. Auer
    • , Cynthia A. Dick
    •  & David N. Reznick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Africanized honey bees (AHB) are notoriously aggressive, but in Puerto Rico they have a ‘gentle’ phenotype. Here, Avalos et al. show that there has been a soft selective sweep at several loci in the Puerto Rican AHB population and suggest a role in the rapid evolution of gentle behaviour.

    • Arian Avalos
    • , Hailin Pan
    •  & Guojie Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To avoid being eaten, poisonous prey animals must rely on fast passage of toxins across a predator’s oral tissue, a major barrier to large molecules. Here, Raaymakers et al. show that antimicrobial peptides co secreted with frog toxins enhance intoxication of a snake predator by permeabilizing oral cell layers.

    • Constantijn Raaymakers
    • , Elin Verbrugghe
    •  & Kim Roelants

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The globally-distributed Ranidae (true frogs) are the largest frog family. Here, Hammond et al. present a draft genome of the North American bullfrog, Rana (Lithobates) catesbeiana, as a foundation for future understanding of true frog genetics as amphibian species face difficult environmental challenges.

    • S. Austin Hammond
    • , René L. Warren
    •  & Inanc Birol

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hummingbirds are known to defy the predicted scaling relationships between body and wing size. Here, Skandalis et al. develop a ‘force allometry’ framework to show that, regardless of wing size, hummingbird species have the same wing velocity during flight.

    • Dimitri A. Skandalis
    • , Paolo S. Segre
    •  & Douglas L. Altshuler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Elevated temperatures can cause anemones to bleach, with unknown effects on their associated symbiotic fish. Here, Beldade and colleagues show that climate-induced bleaching alters anemonefish hormonal stress response, resulting in decreased reproductive hormones and severely impacted reproduction.

    • Ricardo Beldade
    • , Agathe Blandin
    •  & Suzanne C. Mills

  • 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

    Non-human animals are known to exhibit behaviours suggestive of empathy, but the development and maintenance of these traits is unexplored. Here, Webb and colleagues quantify individual consolation tendencies over 10 years across two chimpanzee groups and show evidence of consistent ‘empathetic personalities’.

    • Christine E. Webb
    • , Teresa Romero
    •  & Frans B. M. de Waal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nematodes use a characteristic set of movements, called nictation, to hitchhike on more mobile animals. Here, Lee et al. identify a genetic locus in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans that underlies nictation and contributes to successful hitchhiking, but at expense of reduced offspring production.

    • Daehan Lee
    • , Heeseung Yang
    •  & Junho Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Early-life microbiota alterations can affect infection susceptibility later in life, in animal models. Here, Knutie et al. show that manipulating the microbiota of tadpoles leads to increased susceptibility to parasitic infection in adult frogs, in the absence of substantial changes in the adults’ microbiota.

    • Sarah A. Knutie
    • , Christina L. Wilkinson
    •  & Jason R. Rohr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The range of odours that an insect can detect depends on its olfactory receptors. Here, the authors functionally characterize the olfactory receptor repertoire of the mothSpodoptera littoralis using the Drosophilaempty neuron system and reconstruct the evolution of these receptors in the Lepidoptera.

    • Arthur de Fouchier
    • , William B. Walker III
    •  & Emmanuelle Jacquin-Joly

  • 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

    Biomphalaria glabrata is a fresh water snail that acts as a host for trematode Schistosoma mansoni that causes intestinal infection in human. This work describes the genome and transcriptome analyses from 12 different tissues of B glabrata, and identify genes for snail behavior and evolution.

    • Coen M. Adema
    • , LaDeana W. Hillier
    •  & Richard K. Wilson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In animals with complex life cycles, selection on one life phase may constrain adaptation in another phase. Here the authors find that, during the adaptive radiation of mantellid frogs, the evolution of tadpole and adult morphologies has been uncoupled through phase-specific gene expression.

    • Katharina C. Wollenberg Valero
    • , Joan Garcia-Porta
    •  & Miguel Vences

  • 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

    Numerous selective forces shape animal locomotion patterns and as a result, different animals evolved to use different gaits. Here, Ramdyaet al. use live and in silicoDrosophila, as well as an insect-model robot, to gain insights into the conditions that promote the ubiquitous tripod gait observed in most insects.

    • Pavan Ramdya
    • , Robin Thandiackal
    •  & Dario Floreano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The insect IMD signalling pathway detects invading pathogens. Here the authors show that ticks have an alternative IMD system that lacks peptidoglycan receptors, IMD and FADD, and is instead reliant on interaction of the E3 ligase XIAP with the E2 conjugating enzyme Bendless.

    • Dana K. Shaw
    • , Xiaowei Wang
    •  & Joao H. F. Pedra

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proximity to criticality can be advantageous under changing conditions, but it also entails reduced robustness. Here, the authors analyse fight sizes in a macaque society and find not only that it sits near criticality, but also that the distance from the critical point is tunable through adjustment of individual behaviour and social conflict management.

    • Bryan C. Daniels
    • , David C. Krakauer
    •  & Jessica C. Flack

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Parental care involves shifts in numerous behaviours related to mating, feeding, aggression and social interaction. Here, the authors show that, in burying beetles, parenting is associated with increased levels of neuropeptides known to mediate these precursor behaviours, suggesting co-option of existing genetic pathways.

    • Christopher B. Cunningham
    • , Majors J. Badgett
    •  & Allen J. Moore

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A characteristic of rational behaviour is that it is transitive, such that preferences are ranked in a strict linear order. Here, Arbuthnott and colleagues show that mate choice in the fruit fly,Drosophila melanogaster, is transitive at the population level and that preferred mates produce more offspring.

    • Devin Arbuthnott
    • , Tatyana Y. Fedina
    •  & Daniel E. L. Promislow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of mature vocal patterns is shaped by parental influence in many animals. Here, Gultekin and Hage show that parental feedback not only influences vocal development, but is indeed necessary for juvenile marmosets to acquire normal vocal behaviour.

    • Yasemin B. Gultekin
    •  & Steffen R. Hage

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social insects are commonly parasitized by beetles that live inside colonies and consume nest resources or even the brood. Here, Yamamotoet al. present fossil evidence that social parasitism by beetles dates back at least 99 million years—contemporaneous with the earliest fossil indications of ant and termite eusociality.

    • Shûhei Yamamoto
    • , Munetoshi Maruyama
    •  & Joseph Parker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How water striders escape from danger by jumping vertically from the water surface without sinking is an open question in biomechanics. Yanget al. show that water strider species with varying leg lengths and body masses tune their leg movements to maximize jump speeds without breaking the surface of the water.

    • Eunjin Yang
    • , Jae Hak Son
    •  & Ho-Young Kim

  • 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

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Zoology across other nature.com journals