Adult humans make effortless use of multisensory signals and typically integrate them in an optimal fashion.1 This remarkable ability takes many years for normally sighted children to develop.2,3 Would individuals born blind or with extremely low vision still be able to develop multisensory integration later in life when surgically treated for sight restoration? Late acquisition of such capability

Enantiornithes are the most successful group of Mesozoic birds, arguably representing the first global avian radiation,1, 2, 3, 4 and commonly resolved as the sister to the Ornithuromorpha, the clade within which all living birds are nested.1,3 The wealth of fossils makes it feasible to comparatively test evolutionary hypotheses about the pattern and mode of eco-morphological diversity of these sister

Changes to allometry, or the relative proportions of organs and tissues within organisms, is a common means for adaptive character change in evolution. However, little is understood about how relative size is specified during development and shaped during evolution. Here, through a phylogenomic analysis of genome-wide variation in 35 species of flying fishes and relatives, we identify genetic signatures

Neuronal identity has long been thought of as immutable, so that once a cell acquires a specific fate, it is maintained for life.1 Studies using the overexpression of potent transcription factors to experimentally reprogram neuronal fate in the mouse neocortex2,3 and retina4,5 have challenged this notion by revealing that post-mitotic neurons can switch their identity. Whether fate reprogramming is

A large body of work has aimed to define the precise information encoded by dopaminergic projections innervating the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Prevailing models are based on reward prediction error (RPE) theory, in which dopamine updates associations between rewards and predictive cues by encoding perceived errors between predictions and outcomes. However, RPE cannot describe multiple phenomena to which

The survival of hardy plant species in the deserts of our planet still has a lot to teach us about the limits of survival and the effects of environmental change. Recent studies including the genomes of Welwitschia mirabilis from the Namib Desert and related species, as well as the Green Sahara period, also give clues to the evolutionary time axis of adapting to rising arid conditions. Michael Gross

Scientific thinking about the minds of humans and other animals has been transformed by the idea that the brain is Bayesian. A cornerstone of this idea is that agents set the balance between prior knowledge and incoming evidence based on how reliable or ‘precise’ these different sources of information are — lending the most weight to that which is most reliable. This concept of precision has crept

Indiscriminate voiding of excreta by cattle contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and soil and water contamination1,2. Emissions are higher in animal-friendly husbandry offering cattle more space2 — a trade-off we call the ‘climate killer conundrum’. Voiding in a specific location (latrine) would help resolve this dilemma by allowing ready capture and treatment of excreta under more spacious

Locomotion requires the segmental coordination of activity along the body. A new study in zebrafish reveals that spinal inhibitory interneurons are wired to execute different functions depending on whether their targets are nearby or further away.

Intraluminal vesicles accumulate within the endosomal lumen before lysosomal delivery or extracellular release. A new study reports the development of an elegant assay showing that these vesicles can escape from the endosomal lumen by ‘back-fusion’ or ‘retrofusion’ with the endosomal limiting membrane.

Mapping cyclone paths and seabird wintering areas in the North Atlantic reveals hotspots where they overlap. Modelling the energy expenditure of seabirds suggests that an inability to feed in cyclones is likely to be what makes the high wind conditions deadly.

Active exploration changes how the brain processes auditory space. A new study reveals the dynamic properties of neural activity that encode combinations of sound identity and location during active sensing.

Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus divides in a non-binary manner resulting in an even or odd number of progeny. A new study tracks the spatiotemporal dynamics of chromosome segregation in this species and shows that the process is dependent on the conserved ParA–ParB–parS system.

A new study reports that adaptation to climate extremes appears to be driven by replication of a class of transposable elements in peaches and related species. Advanced genomic sequencing techniques may reveal similar events in other plants exposed to extreme stress.

Can hosts swap ancient symbionts for new ones? A new study shows that a novel partnership between a protist and an algal symbiont can rapidly evolve to both overcome initial incompatibility and adapt to environmental challenges.

A new study finds that mammalian olfaction may be far faster than previously thought. Mice can discriminate between olfactory stimuli that differ in fine temporal structure, at frequencies of up to 40 Hz. But how might mammals achieve high-bandwidth olfaction, and why?

A new study has provided a major advance in understanding courtship communication in Drosophila, arguably the world’s best known model organism, by experimentally defining the complete pathway, step by step, from a male’s vibrational courtship signal to perception in the female's brain.

Neural circuits influence food intake by responding to interoceptive hunger cues and/or hedonic cues. A new study utilizes a hunger discrimination behavioural task combined with opto- and chemo-genetic manipulation to identify hunger and non-hunger sensing neural circuits driving food intake.

After cross-equatorial wintering, migratory birds reliably return to their natal grounds, but a population of cliff swallows recently switched breeding hemisphere. They inverted their annual cycle and migration directions almost instantaneously.

Voltage-gated sodium channels are clustered and immobilized at high densities in electrically excitable cells. A new study shows that ankyrins are essential to tether sodium channels and prevent synaptic fatigue at the neuromuscular junction.

Partner switching plays an important role in the evolution of symbiosis, enabling local adaptation and recovery from the breakdown of symbiosis. Because of intergenomic epistasis, partner-switched symbioses may possess novel combinations of phenotypes but may also exhibit low fitness due to their lack of recent coevolutionary history. Here, we examine the structure and mechanisms of intergenomic epistasis

Neurons are highly polarized cells with morphologically and functionally distinct dendritic and axonal processes. The molecular mechanisms that establish axon-dendrite polarity in vivo are poorly understood. Here, we describe the initial polarization of posterior deirid (PDE), a ciliated mechanosensory neuron, during development in vivo through 4D live imaging with endogenously tagged proteins. PDE

While energy balance is critical to survival, many factors influence food intake beyond caloric need or “hunger.” Despite this, some neurons that drive feeding in mice are routinely referred to as “hunger neurons,” whereas others are not. To understand how specific hypothalamic circuits control interoceptive hunger, we trained mice to discriminate fasted from sated periods. We then manipulated three

Each winter, the North Atlantic Ocean is the stage for numerous cyclones, the most severe ones leading to seabird mass-mortality events called “winter wrecks.”1, 2, 3 During these, thousands of emaciated seabird carcasses are washed ashore along European and North American coasts. Winter cyclones can therefore shape seabird population dynamics4,5 by affecting survival rates as well as the body condition

A fundamental question in neuroscience is whether neuronal circuits with variable circuit parameters that produce similar outputs respond comparably to equivalent perturbations.1, 2, 3, 4 Work on the pyloric rhythm of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) showed that highly variable sets of intrinsic and synaptic conductances can generate similar circuit activity patterns.5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Importantly

As climate change accelerates, species are shifting poleward and subtropical and tropical species are colonizing temperate environments.1, 2, 3 A popular approach for characterizing such responses is the community temperature index (CTI), which tracks the mean thermal affinity of a community. Studies in marine,4 freshwater,5 and terrestrial6 ecosystems have documented increasing CTI under global warming

Mutualisms, such as the ones between ants and aphids, evolve and persist when benefits outweigh the costs from the interactions between the partners. We show here that the trail pheromone of the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, can enhance these benefits by suppressing aphid dispersal and stimulating their reproduction. The ant’s mutualistic partner, the cotton aphid Aphis gossypii, was found

Estimating viral timescales is fundamental in understanding the evolutionary biology of viruses. Molecular clocks are widely used to reveal the recent evolutionary histories of viruses but may severely underestimate their longer-term origins because of the inverse correlation between inferred rates of evolution and the timescale of their measurement. Here, we provide a predictive mechanistic model

In most vertebrates, the demand for glucose as the primary substrate for cellular respiration is met by the breakdown of complex carbohydrates, or energy is obtained by protein and lipid catabolism. In contrast, a few bat and bird species have convergently evolved to subsist on nectar, a sugar-rich mixture of glucose, fructose, and sucrose.1, 2, 3, 4 How these nectar-feeders have adapted to cope with