Animal Behavior and Cognition

Identification of the trail-following pheromone receptor in termites

1. Souleymane Diallo
2. Kateřina Kašparová
3. Josef Šulc
4. Jibin Johny
5. Jan Křivánek
6. Jana Nebesářová
7. David Sillam-Dussès
8. Pavlína Kyjaková
9. Jiří Vondrášek
10. Aleš Machara
11. Ondřej Lukšan
12. Ewald Grosse-Wilde
13. Robert Hanus

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important work by Diallo et al. substantially advances our understanding of the chemosensory system of a non-hymenopteran eusocial insect by identifying the first olfactory receptor for the trail pheromone in termites. The evidence supporting the conclusions that the receptor PsimOR14 is very narrowly tuned for the pheromone neocembrene is compelling. The work will be of broad interest to entomologists, chemical ecologists, neuroscientists, and molecular biologists.

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

Homosensory and heterosensory dishabituation engage distinct circuits in Drosophila

1. Alexandros Charonitakis
2. Sofia Pasadaki
3. Eirini-Maria Georganta
4. Kyriaki Foka
5. Ourania Semelidou
6. Efthimios MC Skoulakis

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important findings on the neural circuits underlying dishabituation of the olfactory avoidance response in Drosophila. The data as presented provide solid evidence that the dishabituation involves distinct pathways from habituation. They show that reward-activated dopaminergic neurons provide input for within-modal dishabituation, while punishment-activated dopaminergic neurons provide input for cross-modal dishabituation. The work will interest neuroscientists, particularly behavioral neuroscientists working on habituation, neural circuits, and the dopaminergic system.

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

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

Four individually identified paired dopamine neurons signal taste punishment in larval Drosophila

1. Denise Weber
2. Katrin Vogt
3. Anton Miroschnikow
4. Michael J 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

Information, certainty, and learning

1. Justin A Harris
2. Charles R Gallistel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important paper shows that the moment at which rats acquire an appetitive Pavlovian conditioned response is determined by the ratio of the reward rate during the Pavlovian cue to the overall reward rate in the context. The exact quantitative relationship between reward rate during the Pavlovian cue, reward rate in the context and acquisition of conditioned responding is very similar to that observed over 40 years ago in a pigeon auto-shaping procedure. This similarity suggests that the mathematical laws that determine acquisition of conditioned responding in different species may be perfectly general. Claims about the processes underlying learning and conditional behavior in rats are supported by convincing evidence. There is solid evidence for the claim that the same relationship describes data from pigeons by Gibbon and Balsam (1981) and the rats in this study. This study will be of interest to those interested in learning, motivated behavior, and related disease states and brain mechanisms.

Reviewed by eLife