Animal Behavior and Cognition

eLife Assessment

This study is deemed to be an important work that carefully deconstructs multi-faceted conditioned fear behavior in mice. The well-controlled experiments provide convincing data that will be of interest to other researchers in the field.

eLife Assessment

This study presents an important finding that ant nest structure and digging behavior depend on ant age demographics for a ground-dwelling ant species (Camponotus fellah). By asking whether ants employ age-polyethism in excavation, the authors address a long-standing question about how individuals in collectives determine the overall state of the task they must perform, and their results may prove to be a key consideration for interpreting results from other studies in the field of social insect behavior. While the experimental evidence that the age of the ants and the group composition affect the digging of tunnels is solid, some of the analyses and modeling are seem superfluous, as they do not further support the results or contribute to a deeper understanding of the system.

eLife Assessment

Shen et al. present a computational account of individual differences in mouse exploration when faced with a novel object in an open field from a previously published study (Akiti et al.) that relates subject-specific intrinsic exploration and caution about potential hazards to the spectrum of behaviors observed in this setting. Overall, this computational study is an important contribution that leverages a very general modeling framework (a Bayes Adaptive Markov Decision Process) to quantify and interrogate distinct drivers of exploratory behavior under potential threat. Given their assumptions, the modeling results are convincing: the authors are able to describe a substantial amount of the behavioral features and idiosyncracies in this dataset, and their model affords a normative interpretation related to inherent risk aversion and predation hazard "flexibility" of individual animals and should be of broad interest to researchers working to understand open-ended exploratory behaviors.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study provides an experimental paradigm and state-of-the-art analysis method for studying the existence of call types and transition differences among Mongolian gerbil families in a naturalistic environment. The analyses are convincing, with a thorough treatment of the acoustic data and a demonstration of the robustness of the observed effect across days. The work will likely be of interest to the auditory neuroscience and neuroethology communities.

eLife Assessment

This important study substantially advances our understanding of nocturnal animal navigation and the ways that animals use polarized light. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, with elegant behavioural experiments in actively navigating ants. The work will be of interest to biologists working on animal navigation or sensory ecology.

eLife Assessment

This important study presents the first identification of the odorant receptor for the trail pheromone in termites. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, with state-of-the-art neurophysiological and genetic methods. The work will be of broad interest in multiple disciplines, such as entomology, chemical ecology, and sensory physiology.

eLife assessment

This study seeks to expand the understanding of insulin and glucose responses in the brain, specifically by implicating a family of protein kinases responsive to insulin. The significance of the study to the field is valuable. The evidence supporting the conclusions about brain glucose utilization is convincing, although there are several aspects that could benefit from additional validation to strengthen the claims.

eLife Assessment

This is an important study, supported by solid data, that suggests a model for diet selection in C. elegans. The significance is that while C. elegans has long been known to be attracted to bacterial volatiles, what specific bacterial volatiles may signify to C. elegans is largely unknown. This study also provides evidence for a possible odorant/GPCR pairing.

eLife assessment

This research investigates the precision of numerosity perception in two different tasks and concludes that human performance aligns with an efficient coding model optimized for current environmental statistics and task goals. The findings may have important implications for our understanding of numerosity perception as well as the ongoing debate on different efficient coding models. However, the evidence presented in the paper to support the conclusion is still incomplete and could be strengthened by further modeling analysis or experimental data that can address potential confounds.

eLife assessment

This important work by Malita et al. describes a mechanism by which an intestinal infection causes an increase in daytime sleep through signaling from the gut to the blood-brain barrier. Their findings suggest that cytokines upd3 and upd2 produced by the intestine following infection act on the glia of the blood-brain barrier to regulate sleep by modulating Allatostatin A signaling. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid. Further verification of certain critical tools, and addressing a few discrepancies from data previously published, would improve this work.