A critical facet of adjusting one's behaviour after succeeding or failing at a task is assigning responsibility for the ultimate outcome. Humans have trait- and state-like tendencies to implicate aspects of their own behaviour (called 'internal' ascriptions) or facets of the particular task or Lady Luck ('chance'). However, how these tendencies interact with actual performance is unclear. We designed

Complex behavioral assessment is becoming increasingly necessary in order to comprehensively assess in vivo manipulations in rodent models. Using operant behavioral paradigms provides rich data sets allowing for the careful analysis of behavioral phenotypes. However, one major limitation in these studies is the expense and work-load that are required using traditional methods. The equipment for commercial

Animals often use assessment signals to communicate information about their quality to a variety of receivers, including potential mates, competitors, and predators. But what maintains reliable signaling and prevents signalers from signaling a better quality than they actually have? Previous work has shown that reliable signaling can be maintained if signalers pay fitness costs for signaling at different

Specialised ribonucleoprotein (RNP) granules are a hallmark of germ cells. Among their main function is the spatial and temporal modulation of the activity of specific mRNA transcripts that allow specification of primary embryonic axes. While RNPs composition and role are well established, their regulation is poorly defined. Here, we demonstrate that Hecw, a newly identified Drosophila ubiquitin ligase

Serotonin plays an important role in adult female sexual behavior, however little is known about the influence of serotonin during early development on sexual functioning in adulthood. During early development, serotonin acts as neurotrophic factor, while it functions as a modulatory neurotransmitter in adulthood. The occurrence of serotonin release, could thus have different effects on behavioral

Kin recognition plays an important role in social evolution, but the proximate mechanisms by which individuals recognize kin remain poorly understood. In many species, individuals form a kin template that they compare against the phenotype of the conspecific to assess phenotypic similarity (and by association, relatedness). Individuals may form a kin template through self-inspection (i.e. self-referencing)

Apathy is widely reported in patients with neurological disorders or post viral infection but is also seen in otherwise-healthy aged individuals. This study investigated whether aged mice express behavioural and physiological changes indicative of an apathy phenotype. Using measures of motivation to work for reward, we found deficits in the progressive ratio task related to rate of responding. In an

The scale of natural insect navigation during foraging makes it challenging to study, in a controlled way, the navigation processes that an insect brain can support. Virtual Reality and trackball setups have offered experimental control over visual environments while studying tethered insects, but potential limitations and confounds introduced by tethering motivates the development of alternative untethered

The saccade is a stereotypic behavior whose investigation improves our understanding of how primate brains implement precise motor control. Furthermore, saccades offer an important window into the cognitive and attentional state of the brain. Historically, saccade studies have largely relied on macaque. However, the cortical network giving rise to the saccadic command is difficult to study in macaque

Division of labor is among the main factors to explain the evolutionary success of social systems, from the origins of multicellularity to complex animal societies. The remarkable ecological success of social insects seems to have been largely driven by ergonomic advantages stemming from the behavioral specialization of workers. However, little is known about how individuals and their correspondent

We report an observation of a female carrion crow, Corvus corone corone, mounting her long-term, pair-bonded, male partner. The report highlights the importance of more systematic quantitative studies of rare socio-sexual behaviours, which could provide important insights into the evolution of non-conceptive socio-sexual behaviours.

A key challenge for any animal (or sampling technique) is to avoid wasting time by searching for resources (information) in places already found to be unprofitable. In biology, this challenge is particularly strong when the organism is a central place forager - returning to a nest between foraging bouts - because it is destined repeatedly to cover much the same ground. This problem will be particularly

Previous studies have related pair bonding in Microtus ochrogaster, the prairie vole, with plastic changes in several brain regions. However, their socially-relevant interactions have yet to be described. In this study, we used resting-state magnetic resonance imaging to explore longitudinal changes in the functional connectivity of brain regions associated with pair bonding. Male and female prairie

Ethologically relevant chemical senses and behavioral habits are likely to coadapt in response to selection. As olfaction is involved in intrinsically motivated behaviors in mice, we hypothesized that selective breeding for a voluntary behavior would enable us to identify novel roles of the chemosensory system. Voluntary wheel running (VWR) is an intrinsically motivated and naturally rewarding behavior

Social networks can vary in their organization and dynamics, with implications for ecological and evolutionary processes. Understanding the mechanisms that drive social network dynamics requires integrating individual-level biology with comparisons across multiple social networks. Testosterone is a key mediator of vertebrate social behavior and can influence how individuals interact with social partners

The circadian and endocrine systems influence many physiological processes in animals, but little is known on the ways they interact in insects. We tested the hypothesis that juvenile hormone (JH) influences circadian rhythms in the social bumble bee Bombus terrestris. JH is the major gonadotropin in this species coordinating processes such as vitellogenesis, oogenesis, wax production, and behaviors

Honey bee swarms are a landmark example of collective behavior. To become a coherent swarm, bees locate their queen by tracking her pheromones, but how can distant individuals exploit these chemical signals which decay rapidly in space and time? Here, we combine a novel behavioral assay with the machine vision detection of organism location and scenting behavior to track the search and aggregation

This study investigated the influence of experienced reward distributions on the shape of utility func-tions inferred from economic choice. Utility is the hypothetical variable that appears to be maximized by the choice. Despite the generally accepted notion that utility functions are not insensitive to external references, the exact occurrence of such changes remains largely unknown. Here we benefitted

Occipito-temporal regions within the face network process perceptual and socio-emotional information, but the dynamics and interactions between different nodes within this network remain unknown. Here, we analyzed intracerebral EEG from 11 epileptic patients viewing a stimulus sequence beginning with a neutral face with direct gaze. The gaze could avert or remain direct, while the emotion changed to

Gene copy number variants (CNV) have an important role in the appearance of neurodevelopmental disorders. Particularly, the deletion of the 16p11.2 locus is associated with autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, and several other features. Earlier studies highlighted the implication of Kctd13 genetic imbalance in the 16p11.2 deletion through the regulation of the RHOA pathway. Here, we

Mice emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) to transmit socially-relevant information. To detect and classify these USVs, here we describe the development of VocalMat. VocalMat is a software that uses image-processing and differential geometry approaches to detect USVs in audio files, eliminating the need for user-defined parameter tuning. VocalMat also uses computational vision and machine learning methods

Foraging opportunities are a key component of enrichment in captive nonhuman primates providing manipulative opportunities in which animals can engage in species-typical behaviors. Recent studies suggest captive NHP populations have increased body weight over time leading to negative health outcomes. Increasing food foraging opportunities provides added calories that can be estimated but often are

Color and spatial vision are critical for recognition and discrimination tasks affecting fitness, including finding food and mates and recognizing offspring. For example, as a counter defense to avoid the cost of raising the unrelated offspring of obligate interspecific avian brood parasites, many host species routinely view, recognize, and remove the foreign egg(s) from their nests. Recent research

Ventral striatal dopamine is thought to be important for associative learning. Dopamine exerts its role via activation of dopamine D1 and D2 receptors in the ventral striatum. Upregulation of dopamine D2R in the indirect pathway of the nucleus accumbens (NAc) impairs incentive motivation via inhibiting synaptic transmission to the ventral pallidum. Here, we determined whether upregulation of D2Rs and

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric illness that results in an increased risk for a variety of inflammatory diseases. The exact etiology of this increased risk in unknown, and thus, several animal models have been developed to investigate the neuroimmune interactions of PTSD. Repeated social defeat stress (RSDS) is an established preclinical model of psychological trauma that recapitulates

Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADDs) are a chemogenetic tool commonly-used to manipulate rodent brain circuit activity. The most widely-used synthetic ligand for DREADDs is Clozapine-N-oxide (CNO). However, CNO is back-metabolized to clozapine, which itself activates numerous endogenous receptors and therefore may influence rodent behavior. To eliminate potential off-target

Behavioral resistance to parasites is widespread in animals, yet little is known about the evolutionary dynamics that have shaped these strategies. Theory developed for the evolution of physiological parasite resistance can only be applied to behavioral resistance under limited circumstances. We find that accounting explicitly for the behavioral processes, including the detectability of infected individuals

Among-individual variation in cognitive performance has been recently demonstrated across a range of animal taxa. While this variation is a prerequisite for contemporary natural selection, it is also true that selection does not act on traits in isolation. Thus, the extent to which cognitive traits covary with other aspects of phenotype (e.g. personality traits) is expected to be an important factor

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health disorder triggered by the exposure to a traumatic event that manifests with anguish, intrusive memories and negative mood changes. So far, there is no efficient treatment for PTSD other than symptomatic palliative care. Based on the implication of the functional amyloid cytoplasmic polyadenylation element binding protein-3 (CPEB3) in the consolidation

Genetic relatedness in animal societies is often a factor that drives the structure of social groups. In the marine world, most studies which have investigated this question have focused on marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. For sharks, recent studies have demonstrated preferential associations among individuals from which social communities emerge. Assortment patterns have been found according

Specific features of visual objects innately draw orienting and approach responses in animals, and provide natural signals of potential reward. In addition, the rapid refinement of innate approach responses enhances the ability of an animal to effectively and conditionally forage, capture prey or initiate a rewarding social experience. However, the neural mechanisms underlying how the brain encodes

Sexual selection can drive the evolution of dramatic morphological and behavioral signals. This selection acts on both specific components of signals and overall signals that combine multiple sources of information. By studying the structure and variability of signals and their components we can improve our understanding of how sexual selection operates. Signal integration can be understood through

Anthropogenic environmental degradation has led to an increase in the frequency and prevalence of aquatic hypoxia (low dissolved-oxygen concentration, DO), which may affect habitat quality for water-breathing fishes. The weakly electric black ghost knifefish, Apteronotus albifrons, is typically found in well-oxygenated freshwater habitats in South America. Using a shuttle-box design, we exposed juvenile

Trophallaxis is the mutual exchange and direct transfer of liquid food among eusocial insects such as ants, termites, wasps, and bees. This process allows efficient dissemination of nutrients and is crucial for the colony’s survival. In this paper, we present a data-driven agent-based model and use it to explore how the interactions of individual bees, following simple, local rules, affect the global

Coding mutations in the LRRK2 gene, encoding for a large protein kinase, have been shown to cause familial Parkinson’s disease (PD). The immediate biological consequence of LRRK2 mutations is to increase kinase activity, leading to the suggestion that inhibition of this enzyme might be useful therapeutically to slow disease progression. Genome-wide association studies have identified the chromosomal

Visual navigation in ants has long been a focus of experimental study [1-3], but only recently have explicit hypotheses about the underlying neural circuitry been proposed [4]. Indirect evidence suggests the mushroom bodies (MB), a known site of olfactory learning [5-10], may also be the substrate for visual memory in navigation tasks [11-14]. Computational modelling shows that MB neural architecture

Behavioral correlations stretching over time are an essential but often neglected aspect of interactions among animals. These correlations pose a challenge to current behavioral-analysis methods that lack effective means to analyze complex series of interactions. Here we show that non-invasive information-theoretic tools can be used to reveal communication protocols that guide complex social interactions

Insect navigation arises from the coordinated action of concurrent guidance systems but the neural mechanisms through which each functions, and are then coordinated, remains unknown. We propose that insects require distinct strategies to retrace familiar routes (route-following) and directly return from novel to familiar terrain (homing) using different aspects of frequency encoded views that are processed

Reinforcement learning involves updating estimates of the value of states and actions on the basis of experience. Previous work has shown that in humans, reinforcement learning exhibits a confirmatory bias: when updating the value of a chosen option, estimates are revised more radically following positive than negative reward prediction errors, but the converse is observed when updating the unchosen

Social interactions pivot on an animal’s experiences, internal states, and feedback from others. This complexity drives the need for precise descriptions of behavior to dissect the fine detail of its genetic and neural circuit bases. In laboratory contests, Drosophila males reliably exhibit aggression, conventionally scored using lunges as a proxy, allowing its study with the many available genetic

Sensitivity to cocaine and its associated stimuli (“cues”) are important factors in the development and maintenance of addiction. Rodent studies suggest that this sensitivity is related, in part, to the propensity to attribute incentive salience to food cues, which, in turn, contributes to the maintenance of cocaine self-administration, and cue-induced relapse of drug-seeking. Whereas each of these

Animals use odors in many natural contexts, for example, for finding mates or food, or signaling danger. Analyses of natural odors search for either the most meaningful components of a natural odor mixture, or they use linear metrics to analyze the mixture compositions. Both analyses assume that the odor space itself is Euclidian, like visual and auditory spaces. However, we have recently shown that

Understanding social organization is fundamental for the analysis of animal societies. In this study, animal single-file movement data —serialized order movements generated by simple bottom-up rules of collective movements— are informative and effective observations for the reconstruction of animal social structures using agent-based models. For simulation, artificial 2-dimensional spatial distributions

Why can humans be intolerant of, yet also be empathetic towards strangers? This cardinal question has rarely been studied in our closest living relatives, bonobos. Yet, their striking xenophilic tendencies make them an interesting model for reconstructing the socio-emotional capacities of the last common ancestor of hominids. Within a series of dot-probe experiments, we compared bonobos’ and humans’

The production of grammatically and semantically appropriate human language requires reference to non-trivially long history of past utterance, which is referred to as the context dependency of human language. Similarly, it is of particular interest to biologists how much effect past behavioral records of individual animals have on their future behavioral decisions. In particular, birdsong serves a

In the past decade, social network analysis was widely adopted in animal studies, and it enabled the revelation of global characteristic patterns of animal social systems from pairwise inter-individual relations. Animal social networks are typically drawn based on geological proximity and/or frequency of social behaviors (e.g., grooming), but the appropriate choice of the distance/closeness metric

A decision to express a defensive response or an escape response to a potential threat is crucial for insects to survive. This study investigated an aminergic mechanism underlying defensive responses to unexpected touch in an ant that has powerful mandibles, the so-called trap-jaw. The mandibles close extremely quickly and are used as a weapon during hunting. Tactile stimulation to the abdomen elicited

The massive use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) has drastically changed the environment for malaria vector mosquitoes, challenging their host-seeking behaviour and biting success. Here, we investigated the effect of a brief exposure to an ITN on the biting behaviour of Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes and the interaction between such behaviour and the kdr mutation that confers resistance to pyrethroids

While culture is widespread in the animal kingdom, human culture has been claimed to be special due to being cumulative. It is currently debated which cognitive abilities support cumulative culture, but behavior copying is one of the main abilities proposed. One important source of contention is the presence or absence of behavior copying in our closest living relatives, non-human great apes (apes)

Over past couple of decades our understanding of visual working memory (VWM), and working memory in general, has been predominantly in line with the capacity debate. We recently opened a new line of inquiry regarding the recall of a single object to go beyond the capacity debate, and showed that a series of feature probe questions about a single object yields poorer recall later in the sequence (Sengupta

Mapping animal performance in a behavioural task to underlying cognitive mechanisms and strategies is rarely straightforward, since a task may be solvable in more than one manner. Here, we show that bumblebees perform well on a concept-based visual discrimination task, but spontaneously switch from a concept-based solution to a simpler heuristic with extended training, all while continually increasing

Bird song is socially learned. During song learning, the bird’s hearing its own vocalization is important for normal development of song. Whether bird’s own song is represented and recognized as a special category in adult birds, however, is unclear. If birds respond differently to their own songs when these are played back to them, this would be evidence for auditory self-recognition. To test this

Because of the nature of social interaction or association data, when testing hypotheses using social network data it is common for network studies to rely on permutations to control for confounding variables, and to not also control for them in the fitted statistical model. This can be a problem because it does not adjust for any bias in effect sizes generated by these confounding effects, and thus

Sunlight is the ultimate source of most visual signals. Theory predicts strong selection for its effective use during communication, with functional links between signal designs and display behaviours a likely result. This is particularly true for iridescent structural colours, whose moment-to-moment appearance bears a heightened sensitivity to the position of signallers, receivers, and the sun. Here

Birds may use a variety of cues to select a nest site, including external information on habitat structure and nest site characteristics, or they may rely instead on social information obtained directly or indirectly from the actions of conspecifics. We used an experimental manipulation to determine the extent to which a California population of the wood duck (Aix sponsa) used social information gleaned

Interception of a moving target is a fundamental behaviour of predators and requires tight coupling between the sensory and motor systems. In the literature of foraging studies, feedback mechanisms based on current target position are frequently reported. However, there have also been recent reports of animals employing feedforward mechanisms, in which prediction of future target location plays an

In environments where females mate multiply, males should adjust their behaviour and physiology in response to the prevailing perceived level of sperm competition. This expectation is well supported by both laboratory and field studies, but we don’t yet know what mechanisms facilitate these plastic responses in natural populations. One way in which males appear to assess sperm competition risk is through

Specialization and plasticity are important for many forms of collective behavior, but the interplay between these factors is little understood. In insect societies, workers are often predisposed to specialize in different tasks, sometimes with morphological or physiological adaptations, facilitating a division of labor. Workers may also plastically switch between tasks or vary their effort. The degree

The hippocampal CA1 is necessary to maintain experienced episodic memory in many species, including humans. To monitor the temporal dynamics of processing, we recorded multiple-unit firings of CA1 neurons in male rats experiencing one of four episodes for 10 min: restraint stress, social interaction with a female or male, or observation of a novel object. Before an experience, the neurons mostly exhibited

The ability to promptly respond to behaviourally relevant events depends on both general alertness and phasic changes in attentional state driven by temporal expectations. Using a variable foreperiod simple reaction time (RT) task in four adult male rhesus macaques, we investigated the role of the cholinergic system in alertness and temporal expectation. Foreperiod-effects on RT reflect temporal expectation