Animal Behavior and Cognition

Evaluation Summary:

The authors investigate what type and degree of information (either absolute, relative, or a weighted combination of both) is used by bumblebees when retrieving the value of an item. There is recent evidence in humans and birds that suggests that these organisms use a combination of absolute memories and remembering of subjective ranking in these tasks. The authors conclude that bumblebees indeed use remembered ranking, but that they seem not to be able to retain (or at least utilise) absolute property information for very long. The absence of relevant work in invertebrates would make this study a potentially valuable addition to the scientific literature.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper is of interest to organismal biologists and evolutionary scientists who study cognitive and behavioral sex differences including those with interests in the evolution of complex spatial behaviors. Using intensive field monitoring and experimentally induced navigational challenges, the authors examine two different hypotheses for sex differences in spatial ability in three species of poison frog. A rich and complex story emerges, including from the provision of evidence that is consistent with (but not necessarily yet definitively or exclusively in support of) the hypothesis that androgens may inadvertently affect spatial ability.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

eLife assessment

This study demonstrates an important method that drastically improves the precision of ultrasound localization in interacting mice. The authors present convincing evidence of the usefulness of the method for quantifying vocal behavior in various situations and demonstrate an interesting vocal dominance phenomenon between males. This tool will be of great interest to all scientists interested in vocal behavior in small animals.

Evaluation Summary:

This study investigates the potential role of kin selection in driving social behaviours among siblings in wild mountain gorillas. Using an impressive dataset of 14 years for 157 individuals the authors find some evidence for kin recognition in guiding biases for affiliative and aggressive behaviours. However, the results of the current study will be more convincing if a number of major concerns with the analysis can be addressed.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This manuscript reports a new method for high-throughput analysis of C. elegans feeding behaviour that overcomes shortcomings of existing methods. It is a useful technique that will be interesting for scientists studying feeding dynamics in worms.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This article may be of interest to researchers working on predator-prey interactions in the fields of biomechanics and neurosensory biology. It presents a mathematical model that outputs possible escape trajectories given parameters relevant to the predator-prey system of interest. The premise of the modeling is attractive, as it includes the time required for prey to turn, but the methods as presently reported raise questions about the validity of some of the conclusions.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

Dongre et al. build on previous social learning research on wild vervet monkeys to investigate the role of a particular social behaviour, muzzle-muzzle contact, in aiding the acceptance of a novel food and provide interesting observations on the potential for male monkeys immigrating from one social group to another in spreading this novel behaviour. With a more robust and transparent analysis, this manuscript has the potential to provide significant insights into innovation and social learning in animals.

This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.

Evaluation Summary:

This study, which will be of interest to behavioral ecologists, uses highly quantitative video tracking approaches to understand the predictors of predators' success in attacking schooling fish and will be of interest to behavioral, evolutionary, and movement ecologists. While some of the results seem unsurprising (e.g., that predators tend to successfully capture prey that are closer to them), the manuscript as a whole highlights the importance of tracking the perspective of the predator as well as of the prey, and shows that animals that are central to a group may sometimes be the most vulnerable. Although the experiments and data analyses are commendable, the manuscript would benefit from more careful discussion of its overall implications for the evolution of collective behavior, including potential limits of the experimental design.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper combines new and previously generated data on hand preference to show that hand preference strength, but not direction, is predicted by ecology and phylogeny across primates. By drawing on the most expansive data set to date on experimentally determined hand preference, it calls existing hypotheses on the evolution of hand preference into question and shows that the strength of lateralization in humans is uniquely extreme. Its results are of interest to evolutionary anthropologists, primatologists, and evolutionary morphologists. However, concerns about intraspecific variation and the accuracy of handedness estimates for poorly sampled species are incompletely addressed by the manuscript in its current form.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists who study navigation and multisensory integration. In it, the authors use several manipulations to convincingly show that hawkmoths use mechanosensory feedback from their antennae to stabilize their head when their body rotates quickly or when they have little visual input. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that control of head angle in insects that lack halteres results from a multimodal feedback loop that integrates visual and antennal mechanosensory feedback. This advances our understanding of how such stabilizing reflexes work beyond Dipteran flies, where much prior work has focused.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)