Animal Behavior and Cognition

Resource-rational account of sequential effects in human prediction

1. Arthur Prat-Carrabin
2. Florent Meyniel
3. Rava Azeredo da Silveira

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This work is relevant to understanding how people represent uncertain events in the world around them and make decisions, with broad applications to economic behavior. It addresses a long-standing empirical puzzle from a novel perspective, where the authors propose that sequential effects in perceptual decisions may emerge from rational choices under cognitive resource constraints rather than adjustments to changing environments. Two new computational models have been constructed to predict behavior under two different constraints, among which the one assuming higher cost for more precise beliefs is better supported by new experimental data. The conclusion may be further strengthened by comparison with alternative models and (optionally) evidence from additional data.

Reviewed by eLife

Species and habitat specific changes in bird activity in an urban environment during Covid 19 lockdown

1. Congnan Sun
2. Yoel Hassin
3. Arjan Boonman
4. Assaf Shwartz
5. Yossi Yovel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript offers a valuable contribution to studying wildlife responses during and after COVID-19 lockdowns. It convincingly demonstrates that bird species in urban areas respond differently to human activity changes. What sets this study apart from others on avian responses to COVID-19 lockdowns is its use of passive acoustic monitoring. By concurrently measuring anthropogenic noise, a crucial reflection of changes in human activity due to COVID-19 lockdowns, this study reveals rare local-scale variations in bird responses to human activity. Only one study so far has used vocalization recordings to assess the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on a bird species.

Reviewed by eLife

Hearing loss in juvenile rats leads to excessive play fighting and hyperactivity, mild cognitive deficits and altered neuronal activity in the prefrontal cortex

1. Jonas Jelinek
2. Marie Johne
3. Mesbah Alam
4. Joachim K. Krauss
5. Andrej Kral
6. Kerstin Schwabe

Reviewed by PREreview

Mesotrode allows chronic simultaneous mesoscale cortical imaging and subcortical or peripheral nerve spiking activity recording in mice

1. Dongsheng Xiao
2. Yuhao Yan
3. Timothy H Murphy

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable study combines chronic widefield calcium imaging of dorsal cortex activity at the mesoscale level with electrical recording of single neurons in specific cortical and subcortical locations. This work provides compelling evidence for recording neuronal activity at multiple temporal and spatial scales by combination of optical and electrophysiological methods. This work will be of broad interest to system neuroscientists studying neural circuits.

Reviewed by eLife

MoveFormer: a Transformer-based model for step-selection animal movement modelling

1. Ondřej Cífka
2. Simon Chamaillé-Jammes
3. Antoine Liutkus

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Finding Drug Repurposing Candidates for Neurodegenerative Diseases using Zebrafish Behavioral Profiles

1. Thaís Del Rosario Hernández
2. Sayali V Gore
3. Jill A Kreiling
4. Robbert Creton

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Mechanical vibration patterns elicit behavioral transitions and habituation in crawling Drosophila larvae

1. Alexander Berne
2. Tom Zhang
3. Joseph Shomar
4. Anggie J Ferrer
5. Aaron Valdes
6. Tomoko Ohyama
7. Mason Klein

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This is a strong manuscript due to its sophisticated behavioral analysis and modeling of behavioral output. The system and results provide a framework for future genetic analysis examining the biological basis of sensory behaviors.

  (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

Validation of a Radio frequency identification system for tracking location of laying hens in a quasi-commercial aviary system

1. Sabine G. Gebhardt-Henrich
2. Alexander Kashev
3. Matthew B. Petelle
4. Michael J. Toscano

Reviewed by Peer Community in Animal Science

Higher social tolerance is associated with more complex facial behavior in macaques

1. Alan V Rincon
2. Bridget M Waller
3. Julie Duboscq
4. Alexander Mielke
5. Claire Pérez
6. Peter R Clark
7. Jérôme Micheletta

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study shows important evidence of the correlation between social tolerance and communicative complexity in a comparison of three macaque species. Notably, the authors use an innovative, detailed methodology for quantifying facial expressions during social interactions. The results are convincing regarding a positive association between social complexity and facial behaviour, which should stimulate further comparative research in this field.

Reviewed by eLife

Urban birds' tolerance towards humans was largely unaffected by COVID-19 shutdown-induced variation in human presence

1. Peter Mikula
2. Martin Bulla
3. Daniel T. Blumstein
4. Yanina Benedetti
5. Kristina Floigl
6. Jukka Jokimäki
7. Marja-Liisa Kaisanlahti-Jokimäki
8. Gábor Markó
9. Federico Morelli
10. Anders Pape Møller
11. Anastasiia Siretckaia
12. Sára Szakony
13. Michael A. Weston
14. Farah Abou Zeid
15. Piotr Tryjanowski
16. Tomáš Albrecht

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This useful paper examines changes (or lack thereof) in birds' fear response to humans as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns. The evidence supporting the primary conclusion is currently inadequate, because the model used does not properly account for many potentially confounding factors that could influence the study's outcomes. If the analytic approach were improved, the findings would be of interest to urban ecologists, behavioral biologists and ecologists, and researchers interested in understanding the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on animals.

Reviewed by eLife