Research Highlights |
Featured
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News & Views |
Ways to raise tadpoles
To reduce parental care, just add water — that's the conclusion of an intriguing investigation into the extent of the motherly and fatherly devotion that different species of frog extend to their offspring.
- Hanna Kokko
- & Michael Jennions
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Letter |
Hierarchical group dynamics in pigeon flocks
How large groups of animals move in a coordinated way has defied complete explanation. Inability to track each member of a flock has hampered understanding of the behavioural rules governing flocks of birds. This, however, has been achieved for a small group of homing pigeons fitted with lightweight GPS loggers. A well–defined hierarchy is revealed — the average position of a pigeon within the flock strongly correlates with is position in the social hierarchy (a kind of airborne pecking order).
- Máté Nagy
- , Zsuzsa Ákos
- & Tamás Vicsek
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Research Highlights |
Wildlife biology: Pitch shifter
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Research Highlights |
Animal behaviour: Tortoise see, tortoise do
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News |
Airborne pigeons obey the pecking order
During flight, pigeons in a flock follow the leader.
- Janelle Weaver
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Letter |
Learning-related fine-scale specificity imaged in motor cortex circuits of behaving mice
It is generally accepted that specific neuronal circuits in the brain's cortex drive behavioural execution, but the relationship between the performance of a task and the function of a circuit is unknown. Here, this problem was tackled by using a technique that allows many neurons within the same circuit to be monitored simultaneously. The findings indicate that enhanced correlated activity in specific ensembles of neurons can identify and encode specific behavioural responses while a task is learned.
- Takaki Komiyama
- , Takashi R. Sato
- & Karel Svoboda
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News & Views |
50 & 100 years ago
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Research Highlights |
Wildlife biology: Fussy eaters
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Letter |
Exceptional dinosaur fossils show ontogenetic development of early feathers
Study of two specimens of the feathered dinosaur Similicaudipteryx shows that the morphology of dinosaur feathers changed dramatically as the animals matured. Moreover, the morphology of feathers in dinosaurs was much more varied than one would expect from looking at feathers in modern birds.
- Xing Xu
- , Xiaoting Zheng
- & Hailu You
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Letter
| Open AccessThe genome of a songbird
The genome of the zebra finch — a songbird and a model for studying the vertebrate brain, behaviour and evolution — has been sequenced. Comparison with the chicken genome, the only other bird genome available, shows that genes that have neural function and are implicated in the cognitive processing of song have been evolving rapidly in the finch lineage. Moreover, vocal communication engages much of the transcriptome of the zebra finch brain.
- Wesley C. Warren
- , David F. Clayton
- & Richard K. Wilson
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Research Highlights |
Biology: A jewel's true colours
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Research Highlights |
Evolutionary biology: Lend a helping claw
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News |
Sperm wars illuminated
Insect sperm fight one another with brute force and chemical weapons.
- John Whitfield
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News & Views |
Pregnant fathers in charge
Pipefish and related species provide rare examples of extreme male parental care. Controlled breeding experiments allow the resulting conflicts of interest between female, male and offspring to be explored.
- Anders Berglund
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News |
Male pipefish abort embryos of ugly mothers
Males show sexual selection before and after copulation.
- Janet Fang
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News |
Snake infrared detection unravelled
Scientists have discovered the receptors that allow snakes to find prey in the dark.
- Janet Fang
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News |
Shellfish could supplant tree-ring climate data
Temperature records gleaned from clamshells reveal accuracy of Norse sagas.
- Richard A. Lovett
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Research Highlights |
Biology: Secret code
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Research Highlights |
Wildlife biology: Lizard back burden
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News & Views |
The treacherous scent of a human
Mosquitoes' odorant receptors help the insects to find humans and, inadvertently, to transmit malaria. The identification of the odorants that bind to these receptors opens up ways of reducing mosquito biting.
- Walter S. Leal
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News |
The snake that swallowed dinosaurs
Fossils reveal that some snakes preyed on baby sauropods.
- Matt Kaplan
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News |
Water-dwelling dinosaur breaks the mould
Spinosaurs' semi-aquatic habits helped them coexist with tyrannosaurs.
- Matt Kaplan
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Authors |
Abstractions
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News |
Moths catch the wind to speed migration
Understanding how insects travel might help to predict pest invasions.
- Janet Fang
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Research Highlights |
Evolutionary anthropology: Baby-like bonobos
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News |
Why spider webs glisten with dew
Two driving forces acting on wet spider silk help it to capture water.
- Janet Fang
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News |
A softer ride for barefoot runners
People who run long distances without shoes cushion the blow with their gait.
- Lizzie Buchen
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News & Views |
Barefoot running strikes back
Detailed analyses of foot kinematics and kinetics in barefoot and shod runners offer a refined understanding of bipedalism in human evolution. This research will also prompt fresh studies of running injuries.
- William L. Jungers
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Letter |
Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners
Although humans have engaged in long-distance running either barefoot or with minimal footwear for most of human evolutionary history, the modern running shoe was not invented until the 1970s. Here, runners who habitually run in sports shoes are shown to run differently to those who habitually run barefoot, with the latter often landing on the fore-foot rather than the rear-foot. This strike pattern may have evolved to protect from some of the impact-related injuries now experienced by runners.
- Daniel E. Lieberman
- , Madhusudhan Venkadesan
- & Yannis Pitsiladis
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Letter |
A bony connection signals laryngeal echolocation in bats
Echolocation is usually associated with bats. Many echolocating bats produce signals in the larynx, but a few species produce tongue clicks. Here, studies show that in all bats that use larynx-generated clicks, the stylohyal bone is connected to the tympanic bone. Study of the stylohyal and tympanic bones of a primitive fossil bat indicates that this species may have been able to echolocate, despite previous evidence to the contrary, raising the question of when and how echolocation evolved in bats.
- Nina Veselka
- , David D. McErlain
- & M. Brock Fenton
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Letter |
Animal cryptochromes mediate magnetoreception by an unconventional photochemical mechanism
Animals use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation but the biophysical basis of this is unclear. The light-dependent magnetic sense of Drosophila melanogaster was recently shown to be mediated by the cryptochrome (Cry) photoreceptor; here, using a transgenic approach, the type 1 and 2 Cry of the monarch butterfly are shown to both function in the magnetoreception system of Drosophila, and probably use an unconventional photochemical mechanism.
- Robert J. Gegear
- , Lauren E. Foley
- & Steven M. Reppert
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Research Highlights |
Biology: Snakes face the heat
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News |
Parasitic larva ditches doomed host
A cunning insect detects when its host is under threat from predators to make a timely escape.
- Lucas Laursen
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News |
Monkeys go out on a limb to show gratitude
Altruistic behaviour in primates relies on reciprocity.
- Janelle Weaver
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News |
Frogs' secret disposal system revealed
Talented amphibians urinate foreign objects implanted in their body cavities.
- Brendan Borrell