Animal Behavior and Cognition

Heron, a Knowledge Graph editor for intuitive implementation of Python-based experimental pipelines

1. George Dimitriadis
2. Ella Svahn
3. Andrew F MacAskill
4. Athena Akrami

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable paper introduces Heron, lightweight scientific software that is designed to streamline the implementation of complex experimental pipelines. The software is tailored for workflows that require coordinating many logical steps across interconnected hardware components with heterogeneous computing environments. The authors convincingly demonstrate Heron's utility and effectiveness in the context of behavioral experiments, addressing a growing need among experimentalists for flexible and scalable solutions that accommodate diverse and evolving hardware requirements.

Reviewed by eLife

Diverse prey capture strategies in teleost larvae

1. Duncan S Mearns
2. Sydney A Hunt
3. Martin W Schneider
4. Ash V Parker
5. Manuel Stemmer
6. Herwig Baier

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important body of work uses state-of-the-art quantitative methods to characterize and compare behaviors across five different fish species to understand which features are conserved and which ones are differentiated. The convincing results from this study will be of interest to ethologists and also have potential utility in understanding the neural mechanisms leading to these behaviors.

Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

Machine learning of honey bee olfactory behavior identifies repellent odorants in free flying bees in the field

1. Joel Kowalewski
2. Barbara Baer-Imhoof
3. Tom Guda
4. Matthew Luy
5. Payton DePalma
6. Boris Baer
7. Anandasankar Ray

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study tests a methodology for the discovery of new honey bee-repellent odorants via machine learning. The conclusions of the study are supported by solid evidence, with predicted compounds validated in the lab and the field. This work will be of interest to researchers in ecology, pest control and olfactory neuroscience.

Reviewed by eLife

Early experience affects foraging behavior of wild fruit-bats more than their original behavioral predispositions

1. Adi Rachum
2. Lee Harten
3. Reut Assa
4. Aya Goldshtein
5. Xing Chen
6. Nesim Gonceer
7. Yossi Yovel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The work presented in this paper provides an important insight into how early life experience shapes adult behavior in fruit bats. The authors raised juvenile bats either in an impoverished or enriched environment and studied their foraging behaviors. The evidence is convincing that bats raised in enriched environments are more active, bold, and exploratory, although further exploration of the data and clarification of the analysis would strengthened the evidence. The work will be of interest to ethologists and developmental psychologists.

Reviewed by eLife

A stimulus-computable rational model of habituation in infants and adults

1. Gal Raz
2. Anjie Cao
3. Rebecca Saxe
4. Michael C Frank

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors provide solid evidence that the likelihood of looking behaviour is predicted by the expected information gain, hence constituting a valuable formal model and explanation of habituation. Such modelling can represent crucial advances in explanation, over-and-above less specified models that can be fitted post hoc to any empirical pattern, although contrast testing with other accounts are desired. The findings would be of interest to researchers studying cognitive development.

Reviewed by eLife

Projections from thalamic nucleus reuniens to hippocampal CA1 area participate in context fear extinction by affecting extinction-induced molecular remodeling of excitatory synapses

1. Magdalena Ziółkowska
2. Narges Sotoudeh
3. Anna Cały
4. Monika Puchalska
5. Roberto Pagano
6. Malgorzata Alicja Śliwińska
7. Ahmad Salamian
8. Kasia Radwanska

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work provides important findings characterizing potential synaptic mechanisms supporting the role of midline thalamus-hippocampal projections in fear memory extinction in mice. The methods and approaches were considered solid, though some evidence is incomplete as there are some concerns with the analytical approaches used for some aspects of the study. This work will be of interest to those in the field of thalamic regulation and fear memory.

Reviewed by eLife

Vasopressin 1a receptor antagonist disrupts male-male affiliative relationships formed by triadic cohabitation in large-billed crows

1. Akiko Seguchi
2. Ei-Ichi Izawa

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study investigates the role of vasopressin in modulating same-sex affiliative relationships in the context of linear dominance hierarchies. It provides convincing evidence that vasopressin signaling is involved in modulating aspects of affiliative behavior, although the evidence that affiliative relationships specifically arise from the triadic interaction study design is incomplete. Nevertheless, its focus on broadening the types of social relationships and species studied in this area makes it of interest to both neuroendocrinologists and colleagues studying the evolution and mechanisms underlying social affiliation.

Reviewed by eLife

High-throughput unsupervised quantification of patterns in the natural behavior of marmosets

1. William Menegas
2. Erin Corbett
3. Kimberly Beliard
4. Haoran Xu
5. Shivangi Parmar
6. Robert Desimone
7. Guoping Feng

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study demonstrates the ability for high-throughput recording and categorization of unconstrained and stimulus-based behaviors across a very large population of marmosets (n = 120 animals across 36 family units). The authors implement an analytical approach to identify "outlier" behavior that could be key in the development of next-generation precision psychiatry. While the strength of evidence appears solid overall, many key methodological details are incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Intra- and interspecific variations in flight performance of oak-associated Agrilinae (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) using computerised flight mills

1. Elodie Le Souchu
2. Aurélien Sallé
3. Stéphanie Bankhead-Dronnet
4. Mathieu Laparie
5. Daniel Sauvard

Reviewed by Peer Community In Zoology

High-throughput tracking enables systematic phenotyping and drug repurposing in C. elegans disease models

1. Thomas J O'Brien
2. Ida L Barlow
3. Luigi Feriani
4. André EX Brown

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study provides proof of principle that C. elegans models can be used to accelerate the discovery of candidate treatments for human Mendelian diseases by detailed high-throughput phenotyping of strains harboring mutations in orthologs of human disease genes. The data are compelling and support an approach that enables the potential rapid repurposing of FDA-approved drugs to treat rare diseases for which there are currently no effective treatments. The work will be of interest to all geneticists.

Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science