Animal Behavior and Cognition

Adaptation of Drosophila larva foraging in response to changes in food resources

1. Marina E Wosniack
2. Dylan Festa
3. Nan Hu
4. Julijana Gjorgjieva
5. Jimena Berni

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that investigates foraging in complex landscapes. It is therefore of interest to neuroscientists and ecologists. The paper effectively combines behavioral experiments with phenomenological modeling to investigate which navigational strategies are responsive to the type and distribution of food patches. The main experimental results pertaining to food strategy are well supported, with secondary results limited by the low sample sizes.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Conditional and unconditional components of aversively motivated freezing, flight and darting in mice

1. Jeremy M Trott
2. Ann N Hoffman
3. Irina Zhuravka
4. Michael S Fanselow

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists, learning theorists and clinicians concerned with factors influencing threat-related response selection relevant to fear vs. panic. The manuscript describes a group of well designed experiments that investigate whether flight-like behaviors reported by other investigators require associative learning in order to occur. The authors demonstrate that non-associative influences can produce strong flight behaviors, but the dataset presented does not eliminate the possibility that associative influences can drive these responses, as well.

  (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 name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Fat body phospholipid state dictates hunger-driven feeding behavior

1. Kevin P Kelly
2. Mroj Alassaf
3. Camille E Sullivan
4. Ava E Brent
5. Zachary H Goldberg
6. Michelle E Poling
7. Julien Dubrulle
8. Akhila Rajan

Reviewed by Review Commons

Collective dynamics support group drumming, reduce variability, and stabilize tempo drift

1. Dobromir Dotov
2. Lana Delasanta
3. Daniel J Cameron
4. Edward W Large
5. Laurel Trainor

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The paper will be of great interest to scientists looking for new approaches to understanding group behavior, especially within the fields of human cognition, neurosciences, and musicology. Taking joint drumming as a model of collective dynamics, and combining several quantitative methods, the authors characterize how human behavior changes, at the individual- and group-level, as a function of group numerosity. An important take home message of this work is that not everything we know from studies involving dyads should be necessarily generalized to larger groups.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Putting perception into action with inverse optimal control for continuous psychophysics

1. Dominik Straub
2. Constantin A Rothkopf

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The paper presents a Bayesian model framework for estimating individual perceptual uncertainty from continuous tracking data, taking into account motor variability, action cost, and possible misestimation of the generative dynamics. While the contribution is mostly technical, the analyses are well done and clearly explained. The paper provides therefore a didactic resource for students wishing to implement similar models on continuous action data.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Alternation emerges as a multi-modal strategy for turbulent odor navigation

1. Nicola Rigolli
2. Gautam Reddy
3. Agnese Seminara
4. Massimo Vergassola

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This work provides an insightful analysis of how animals can use different types of sniffing to quickly find the sources of odorants in natural, often turbulent, environments. As it turns out, the air near the ground is less turbulent but does not provide high precision information about the location of sources that are far away. To get that kind of information, animals have to pause and sniff in the air. Authors show that the relative balance between sniffing near the ground and in the air shifts as the animals approach the source and that this shift matches optimal strategies that can be pursued based on partially observable statistical models of the environment. The paper also includes a very useful set of simulations of odorant flow in the presence of obstacles that will be made publicly available.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Young domestic chicks spontaneously represent the absence of objects

1. Eszter Szabó
2. Cinzia Chiandetti
3. Ernő Téglás
4. Elisabetta Versace
5. Gergely Csibra
6. Ágnes Melinda Kovács
7. Giorgio Vallortigara

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The research detailed in this manuscript investigates whether young chicks represent the absence of objects. This work is important to multiple fields of inquiry such as ethology and neuroscience, and is the first time this ability has been studied spontaneously in such a population, as opposed to after many trials of experience. The data effectively support most of the conclusions, though a few elements need clarification, especially in regards to possible sex-dependent representations of absence.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Experimental evidence that uniformly white sclera enhances the visibility of eye-gaze direction in humans and chimpanzees

1. Fumihiro Kano
2. Yuri Kawaguchi
3. Yeow Hanling

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The study by Kano et al. provides experimental evidence that specific features of the human eye, namely shape and sclera depigmentation, enhance the ability to detect gaze direction of individuals. The study is notable for being the first to adopt a comparative experimental approach, testing both humans and chimpanzees, to demonstrate that white sclera can enhance gaze discrimination in both species, particularly when visibility is poor.

  (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 name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Ecological and social pressures interfere with homeostatic sleep regulation in the wild

1. J Carter Loftus
2. Roi Harel
3. Chase L Núñez
4. Margaret C Crofoot

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This article will be of interest to behavioral ecologists studying activity patterns in wild animals. Using accelerometry, rather than polysomnography, opens up exciting opportunities for studying animal sleep under natural conditions for relatively long periods.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Monkey plays Pac-Man with compositional strategies and hierarchical decision-making

1. Qianli Yang
2. Zhongqiao Lin
3. Wenyi Zhang
4. Jianshu Li
5. Xiyuan Chen
6. Jiaqi Zhang
7. Tianming Yang

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This report presents findings of broad interest to behavioral, systems, and cognitive neuroscientists. The combination of a complex behavioral paradigm and sophisticated modeling provides significant insight and a novel approach to studying higher cognition in primates. Key clarifications are needed that have to do with better justification for the modeling strategy, selective comparisons within the data, and a more thorough consideration that subjects may employ a more passive strategy.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife