eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Individual recognition in a jumping spider (Phidippus regius)

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Christoph D Dahl
   2. Yaling Cheng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides a valuable examination of the social discrimination abilities of a jumping spider, Phippidus regius, based on visual cues. Behavioral essays yielded solid evidence that these spiders discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar individuals on the basis of visual cues, however the experimental support for individual recognition and long-term memory is incomplete. While the results supply evidence of discrimination, additional experiments would be needed to verify the evidence of individual recognition.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. The title and authors for this article are not available from our external data provider yet:
   10.48550/arxiv.2404.07102v3

3. Multidimensionality of tree communities structure host-parasitoid networks and their phylogenetic composition

   This article has 23 authors:

   1. Ming-Qiang Wang
   2. Shi-Kun Guo
   3. Peng-Fei Guo
   4. Juan-Juan Yang
   5. Guo-Ai Chen
   6. Douglas Chesters
   7. Michael C Orr
   8. Ze-Qing Niu
   9. Michael Staab
   10. Jing-Ting Chen
   11. Yi Li
   12. Qing-Song Zhou
   13. Felix Fornoff
   14. Xiaoyu Shi
   15. Shan Li
   16. Massimo Martini
   17. Alexandra-Maria Klein
   18. Andreas Schuldt
   19. Xiaojuan Liu
   20. Keping Ma
   21. Helge Bruelheide
   22. Arong Luo
   23. Chao-Dong Zhu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study uses a massive and long-term experimental data set to provide solid evidence on how tree diversity affects host-parasitoid communities of insects in forests. The work will be of interest to ecologists working on biodiversity conservation, community ecology, and food webs.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Kynurenine monooxygenase blockade reduces endometriosis-like lesions, improves visceral hyperalgesia, and rescues mice from a negative behavioural phenotype in experimental endometriosis

   This article has 22 authors:

   1. Ben Higgins
   2. Ioannis Simitsidellis
   3. Xiaozhong Zheng
   4. Frances Collins
   5. Natalie ZM Homer
   6. Scott G Denham
   7. Joanna P Simpson
   8. Mike Millar
   9. Lyndsey Boswell
   10. Hee Y Lee
   11. Yeon G Kim
   12. Kyung H Park
   13. Larry C Park
   14. Patrick J Sweeney
   15. Gerard Feraille
   16. Alessandro Taddei
   17. David Chagras
   18. Thierry Alvarez
   19. Scott P Webster
   20. Andrew Horne
   21. Philippa TK Saunders
   22. Damian J Mole

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study holds importance within the focused scope of endometriosis treatment, providing initial evidence of a potential new therapeutic target. The strength of the evidence is solid, as the methods, data, and analyses support the authors' conclusions regarding the specific aims. The study provides promising preliminary evidence of KMO implication in endometriosis, but it falls short of establishing a strong rationale for proposing KNS898 as a treatment for endometriosis given the limitations in evidence and mechanistic insights.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Passive accumulation of alkaloids in inconspicuously colored frogs refines the evolutionary paradigm of acquired chemical defenses

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Rebecca D Tarvin
   2. Jeffrey L Coleman
   3. David A Donoso
   4. Mileidy Betancourth-Cundar
   5. Karem López-Hervas
   6. Kimberly S Gleason
   7. J Ryan Sanders
   8. Jacqueline M Smith
   9. Santiago R Ron
   10. Juan C Santos
   11. Brian E Sedio
   12. David C Cannatella
   13. Richard W Fitch

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study is important, with the potential to greatly impact future research on the evolution of chemical defense mechanisms in animals. The authors present compelling evidence for the presence of low quantities of alkaloids in amphibians previously thought to lack these toxins. They then integrate these findings with existing literature to propose a four-phase scenario for the evolution of chemical defense in alkaloid-containing poison frogs, emphasizing the role of passive accumulation mechanisms.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Template switching during DNA replication is a prevalent source of adaptive gene amplification

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Julie N Chuong
   2. Nadav Ben Nun
   3. Ina Suresh
   4. Julia Cano Matthews
   5. Titir De
   6. Grace Avecilla
   7. Farah Abdul-Rahman
   8. Nathan Brandt
   9. Yoav Ram
   10. David Gresham

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides important new insights into the contributions of local DNA features to the complex molecular mechanisms and dynamics of copy number variation (CNV) formation during adaptive evolution. While limited to a single CNV of interest, the study is well-designed and carefully controlled, presenting compelling evidence that supports the conclusions. This work will be of general interest to those studying genome architecture and evolution from yeast biologists to cancer researchers.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Subcellular visualization of the distribution of atmospheric dinitrogen fixed by Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus bacteria in maize

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Greg McMahon
   2. Stephanie Rey
   3. Katie Moore
   4. Gina Greenidge
   5. Dhaval Patel
   6. Erik H Murchie
   7. David Dent
   8. Edward Cocking

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This solid and innovative study explores the uptake of fixed nitrogen in maize chloroplasts facilitated by symbiotic Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus bacteria. The findings provide valuable insights into plant-microbe interactions, particularly highlighting a symbiotic mechanism of nitrogen delivery independent nodule formation. Additional controls would help to substantiate the findings and enhance the overall strength of the evidence.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Endopiriform neurons projecting to ventral CA1 are a critical node for recognition memory

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Naoki Yamawaki
   2. Hande Login
   3. Solbjørg Østergaard Feld-Jakobsen
   4. Bernadett Mercedesz Molnar
   5. Mads Zippor Kirkegaard
   6. Maria Moltesen
   7. Aleksandra Okrasa
   8. Jelena Radulovic
   9. Asami Tanimura

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study offers insights into the function and connectivity patterns of a relatively unknown afferent input from the endopiriform to the CA1 subfield of the ventral hippocampus, suggesting a neural mechanism that suppresses the processing of familiar stimuli in favor of detecting memory guided novelty. The strength of evidence is convincing, with careful anatomical and electrophysiological circuit characterization. The work will be of broad interest to researchers studying the neural circuitry of behavior.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. ASBAR: an Animal Skeleton-Based Action Recognition framework. Recognizing great ape behaviors in the wild using pose estimation

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Michael Fuchs
   2. Emilie Genty
   3. Klaus Zuberbühler
   4. Paul Cotofrei

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study presents a new framework (ASBAR) that combines open-source toolboxes for pose estimation and behavior recognition to automate the process of categorizing behaviors in wild apes from video data. The authors present compelling evidence that this pipeline can categorize simple wild ape behaviors from out-of-context video at a similar level of accuracy as previous models, while simultaneously vastly reducing the size of the model. The study's results should be of particular interest to primatologists and other behavioral biologists working with natural populations.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Neural population dynamics underlying evidence accumulation in multiple rat brain regions

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Brian DePasquale
    2. Carlos D Brody
    3. Jonathan W Pillow

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This valuable paper presents findings showing that different brain regions were best described by a distinct accumulation model, which all differed from the model that best described the rat's choices. These findings are solid because the authors present a very strong methodological approach. This work will be of interest to a wide neuroscientific audience.

    Reviewed by eLife