Animal Behavior and Cognition

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

Hippocampal neuroinflammation causes sex-specific disruptions in action selection, food approach memories, and neuronal activation

1. Kiruthika Ganesan
2. Sahar Ghorbanpour
3. William Kendall
4. Sarah Thomas Broome
5. Joanne M. Gladding
6. Amolika Dhungana
7. Arvie Rodriguez Abiero
8. Maedeh Mahmoudi
9. Alessandro Castorina
10. Michael D. Kendig
11. Serena Becchi
12. Veronika Valova
13. Louise Cole
14. Laura A. Bradfield

Reviewed by preLights

Why the brown ghost chirps at night

1. Livio Oboti
2. Federico Pedraja
3. Marie Ritter
4. Marlena Lohse
5. Lennart Klette
6. Rüdiger Krahe

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study addresses a significant question in sensory ethology and active sensing in particular. It links the production of a specific signal - electrosensory chirps - to various contexts and conditions to propose that chirps may also serve an active sensing role in addition to their more well-known role in communication. The evidence supporting the role for active sensing is strong. In particular, the evidence showing increased chirping in more cluttered environments and the relationship between chirping and movement are convincing. The study provides a lot of valuable data, and is likely to stimulate follow-up behavioral and physiological studies.

Reviewed by eLife

Contributions of associative and non-associative learning to the dynamics of defensive ethograms

1. Quan-Son Eric Le
2. Daniel Hereford
3. Chandrashekhar D Borkar
4. Zach Aldaco
5. Julia Klar
6. Alexis Resendez
7. Jonathan P Fadok

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Unsupervised discovery of family specific vocal usage in the Mongolian gerbil

1. Ralph E Peterson
2. Aman Choudhri
3. Catalin Mitelut
4. Aramis Tanelus
5. Athena Capo-Battaglia
6. Alex H Williams
7. David M Schneider
8. Dan H Sanes

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Polarised moonlight guides nocturnal bull ants home

1. Cody A Freas
2. Ajay Narenda
3. Trevor Murray
4. Ken Cheng

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Endogenous Precision of the Number Sense

1. Arthur Prat-Carrabin
2. Michael Woodford

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Developmental stage shapes the realized energy landscape for a flight specialist

1. Elham Nourani
2. Louise Faure
3. Hester Brønnvik
4. Martina Scacco
5. Enrico Bassi
6. Wolfgang Fiedler
7. Martin U Grüebler
8. Julia S Hatzl
9. David Jenny
10. Andrea Roverselli
11. Petra Sumasgutner
12. Matthias Tschumi
13. Martin Wikelski
14. Kamran Safi

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study substantially advances our understanding of energy landscapes and their link to animal ontogeny. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, with high-throughput telemetry data and advanced track segmentation methods used to develop and map energy landscapes. The work will be of broad interest to animal ecologists.

Reviewed by eLife