Animal Behavior and Cognition

Hatching with Numbers: Pre-natal Light Exposure Affects Number Sense and the Mental Number Line in young domestic chicks

1. Rosa Rugani
2. Matteo Macchinizzi
3. Yujia Zhang
4. Lucia Regolin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study demonstrates how a left-right bias in the relationship between numerical magnitude and space depends on brain lateralization. The evidence is compelling, and the manuscript could be strengthened by improving its contextualization, presentation, and discussion. The results will be of interest to researchers studying numerical cognition, brain lateralization, and cognitive brain development more broadly.

Reviewed by eLife

Old age variably impacts chimpanzee engagement and efficiency in stone tool use

1. Elliot Howard-Spink
2. Tetsuro Matsuzawa
3. Susana Carvalho
4. Catherine Hobaiter
5. Katarina Almeida-Warren
6. Thibaud Gruber
7. Dora Biro

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study provides a novel framework for leveraging longitudinal field observations to examine the effects of aging on stone tool use behaviour in wild chimpanzees. The methods and results are robust providing solid evidence of the effects of old age on nut cracking behaviour at this field site. Despite the low sample size of five individuals, this study is of broad interest to ethologists, primatologists, archaeologists, and psychologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Integration of parallel pathways for flight control in a hawkmoth reflects prevalence and relevance of natural visual cues

1. Ronja Bigge
2. Rebecca Grittner
3. Anna Stöckl

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study investigates how hummingbird hawkmoths integrate stimuli from across their visual field to guide flight behavior. Cue conflict experiments provide solid evidence for an integration hierarchy within the visual field: hawkmoths prioritize the avoidance of dorsal visual stimuli, potentially to avoid crashing into foliage, while they use ventrolateral optic flow to guide flight control. The paper will be of broad interest to enthusiasts of visual neuroscience and flight behavior.

Reviewed by eLife

Bees flexibly adjust decision strategies to information content in a foraging task

1. Johannes Spaethe
2. Selma Hutzenthaler
3. Alexander Dietz
4. Karl Gehrig
5. James Foster
6. Anna Stöckl

Reviewed by preLights

Learning and cognition in highspeed decision making

1. Martin Krause
2. Wolfram Schulze
3. Stefan Schuster

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study investigates the adaptability of prey capture by archerfish, which hunt insects by spitting at them and then rapidly turning to reach their landing point on the water surface. The results of elaborate behavioral experiments and measurements show that, even though the visuomotor behavior unfolds very rapidly (in less than 100 ms), it is not hardwired and can adapt to different simulated physics and different prey shapes. The data are convincing and should be of relevance to those interested in rapid decision making in general, beyond the archerfish model.

Reviewed by eLife

A contextual fear conditioning paradigm in head-fixed mice exploring virtual reality

1. Seetha Krishnan
2. Can Dong
3. Heather Ratigan
4. Denisse Morales-Rodriguez
5. Chery Cherian
6. Mark Sheffield

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study presents a virtual reality-based contextual fear conditioning paradigm for head-fixed mice. Solid evidence supports the claim that the reported methods provide a reliable paradigm for studying contextual fear conditioning in head-fixed mice. The approach provides a way to perform multiphoton imaging of neural circuits, and other techniques that are typically performed in head-fixed animals, during behaviors that have traditionally been studied in freely moving animals.

Reviewed by eLife

Tracking butterfly flight in the field from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV): a methodological proof of principle

1. Emmanuel de Margerie
2. Kyra Monmasson

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Fitness drivers of division of labor in vertebrates

1. Irene García-Ruiz
2. Dustin Rubenstein

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable work formulates an individual-based model to understand the evolution of division of labor in vertebrates, in particular, to examine the role of indirect versus direct fitness benefits. The evidence supporting the main conclusions is incomplete at this stage, with key details of simulation assumptions not adequately described and exploration of alternative assumptions and parameter space lacking.

Reviewed by eLife

Four Individually Identified Paired Dopamine Neurons Signal Taste Punishment in Larval Drosophila

1. Denise Weber
2. Katrin Vogt
3. Anton Miroschnikow
4. Michael Pankratz
5. Andreas S Thum

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This comprehensive study presents important findings that delineate how specific dopaminergic neurons (DANs) instruct aversive learning in Drosophila larvae exposed to high salt through an integration of behavioral experiments, imaging, and connectomic analysis. The work reveals how a numerically minimal circuit achieves remarkable functional complexity, with redundancies and synergies within the DL1 cluster that challenge our understanding of how few neurons generate learning behaviors. By establishing a framework for sensory-driven learning pathways, the study makes a compelling and substantial contribution to understanding associative conditioning while demonstrating conservation of learning mechanisms across Drosophila developmental stages.

Reviewed by eLife

Acquisition of auditory discrimination mediated by different processes through two distinct circuits linked to the lateral striatum

1. Susumu Setogawa
2. Takashi Okauchi
3. Di Hu
4. Yasuhiro Wada
5. Keigo Hikishima
6. Hirotaka Onoe
7. Kayo Nishizawa
8. Nobuyuki Sakayori
9. Hiroyuki Miyawaki
10. Takuma Kitanishi
11. Kenji Mizuseki
12. Yilong Cui
13. Kazuto Kobayashi

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides an important understanding of the contribution of different striatal subregions, the anterior Dorsal Lateral Striatum (aDLS) and the posterior Ventrolateral Striatum (pVLS), to auditory discrimination learning. The authors have included robust behavior combined with multiple observational and perturbation techniques. The data provided are convincing of the relevance of task-related activity in these two subregions during learning.

Reviewed by eLife