Animal behaviour articles within Nature Communications

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  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    The social intelligence hypothesis predicts that social organisms tend to be more intelligent because within-group interactions drive cognitive evolution. Here, authors propose that conspecific outsiders can be just as important in selecting for sophisticated cognitive adaptations.

    • Benjamin J. Ashton
    • , Patrick Kennedy
    •  & Andrew N. Radford

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Song et al. inferred that stridulatory wings and tibial ears co-evolved in a sexual context among crickets, katydids, and their allies, while abdominal ears evolved first in a non-sexual context in grasshoppers, and were later co-opted for courtship. They found little evidence that the evolution of these organs increased lineage diversification.

    • Hojun Song
    • , Olivier Béthoux
    •  & Sabrina Simon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animal signals often encode information on the emitter’s species identity. Using woodpecker drumming as a model, here the authors show that limited signal divergence during a clade radiation does not impair species discrimination, as long as the signals are adapted to local ecological requirements.

    • Maxime Garcia
    • , Frédéric Theunissen
    •  & Nicolas Mathevon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Environmental variability is one potential driver of behavioural and cultural diversity in humans and other animals. Here, the authors show that chimpanzee behavioural diversity is higher in habitats that are more seasonal and historically unstable, and in savannah woodland relative to forested sites.

    • Ammie K. Kalan
    • , Lars Kulik
    •  & Hjalmar S. Kühl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In animal groups, the degree of alignment of individuals could have different benefits and costs for individuals depending on their reliance on private or social information. Here the authors show that in shoals of three-spined sticklebacks, some individuals reach resources faster when groups are disordered, a state which favours reliance on privately acquired information, while other individuals reach resources faster when groups are ordered, allowing them to exploit social information more effectively.

    • Hannah E. A. MacGregor
    • , James E. Herbert-Read
    •  & Christos C. Ioannou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previously only humans and the great apes have been shown to use probabilities to make predictions about uncertain events, and integrate social and physical information into their predictions. Here, the authors demonstrate these capacities in a parrot species, the kea.

    • Amalia P. M. Bastos
    •  & Alex H. Taylor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cleaner fish can cheat clients for higher rewards but this comes with a risk of punishment. Here, Truskanov et al. show that juvenile cleaner fish can learn by observing adults to behave more cooperatively themselves but also to prefer clients that are more tolerant to cheating.

    • Noa Truskanov
    • , Yasmin Emery
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Honeybees have a sophisticated system to communicate foraging locations through a “dance”, but they also share food-related olfactory cues. Here, Hasenjager and colleagues use social network analysis to disentangle how foraging information is transmitted through these systems in different contexts.

    • Matthew J. Hasenjager
    • , William Hoppitt
    •  & Ellouise Leadbeater

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animals can obtain information on predation risk directly from observing predators or indirectly from the alarm calls of others. Here, the authors show that red-breasted nuthatches encode information on risk in their own alarm calls differently depending on the source of the information.

    • Nora V Carlson
    • , Erick Greene
    •  & Christopher N Templeton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Acoustic communication is widespread, but not universal, across terrestrial vertebrates. Here, the authors show that acoustic communication evolved anciently, but independently, in most tetrapod groups and that these origins were associated with nocturnal activity.

    • Zhuo Chen
    •  & John J. Wiens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent work has suggested that lift and drag may be employed differently in slow, flapping flight compared to classic flight aerodynamics. Here the authors develop a method to measure vertical and horizontal aerodynamic forces simultaneously and use it to quantify lift and drag during slow flight.

    • Diana D. Chin
    •  & David Lentink

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Parental care can take many forms but how this diversity arises is not well understood. Here, the authors compile data for over 1300 amphibian species and show that different forms of care evolve at different rates, prolonged care can be easily reduced, and biparental care is evolutionarily unstable.

    • Andrew I. Furness
    •  & Isabella Capellini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fish Astyanax mexicanus has divergent cave and river-dwelling eco-morphotypes. Here, Hyacinthe et al. show that cave and river fish communicate sonically, but that the sounds produced and the responses elicited in the two morphs depend differently on the social and behavioral context.

    • Carole Hyacinthe
    • , Joël Attia
    •  & Sylvie Rétaux

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When injured, fish release an alarm substance produced by club cells in the skin that elicits fear in members of their shoal. Here, the authors show that mucus and bacteria are transported from the external surface into club cells, and bacterial components elicit alarm behaviour, acting in concert with a substance from fish.

    • Joanne Shu Ming Chia
    • , Elena S. Wall
    •  & Suresh Jesuthasan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bats are long-lived animals that can produce a complex vocabulary of social communication calls. Here, the authors show that even in adulthood, bats retain the ability to adaptively introduce long-term modifications to their vocalizations, showing persistent vocal plasticity.

    • Daria Genzel
    • , Janki Desai
    •  & Michael M. Yartsev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensory drive theory predicts that vocal signalling coevolves with auditory sensitivity, but empirical evidence is limited. Here, Charlton et al. show that vocal characteristics and hearing have coevolved in forest mammals, due to constraints imposed by the local signalling environment.

    • Benjamin D. Charlton
    • , Megan A. Owen
    •  & Ronald R. Swaisgood

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dog breeds differ in evolutionary age and admixture with wolves, enabling comparison across domestication stages. Here, Hansen Wheat et al. show that correlations among behaviours are decoupled in modern breeds compared to ancient breeds and suggest this reflects a recent shift in selection pressure.

    • Christina Hansen Wheat
    • , John L. Fitzpatrick
    •  & Hans Temrin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reversible phenotypic plasticity is expected to be favoured by long lifespan, as this increases the environmental variation individuals experience. Here, the authors develop a model showing how phenotypic plasticity can drive selection on lifespan, leading to coevolution of these traits.

    • Irja I. Ratikainen
    •  & Hanna Kokko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Theory predicts that mating systems influence the relative strength of sexual selection before and after mating. Here, Morimoto and colleagues demonstrate that higher polyandry weakens precopulatory while strengthening post-copulatory sexual selection on males in Drosophila melanogaster.

    • Juliano Morimoto
    • , Grant C. McDonald
    •  & Stuart Wigby

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although components of animal mating signals are often studied separately, many animals produce complex multimodal displays. Here, the authors show that the courtship display of male broad-tailed hummingbirds consists of synchronized motions, sounds, and colors that occur within just 300 milliseconds.

    • Benedict G. Hogan
    •  & Mary Caswell Stoddard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans infer the trustworthiness of others based on subtle facial features such as the facial width-to-height ratio, but it is not known whether other primates are sensitive to these cues. Here, the authors show that macaque monkeys prefer to look at human faces which appear trustworthy to humans.

    • Manuela Costa
    • , Alice Gomez
    •  & Angela Sirigu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Individual animals have vocal signatures, but are the same signatures consistent across behavioral contexts? Here, the authors use behavioral experiments and acoustic analyses to show that zebra finches have distinct vocal signatures for different call types, such as aggression and long-distance contact.

    • Julie E. Elie
    •  & Frédéric E. Theunissen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    ‘Conformist bias’, in which individuals learn a common behavioural variant more often than expected by chance, has not been demonstrated convincingly in non-human animals. This study analyses song recordings and models of cultural evolution to show conformist bias in swamp sparrow populations.

    • Robert F. Lachlan
    • , Oliver Ratmann
    •  & Stephen Nowicki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Advances in animal magnetoreception have been limited by a lack of tractable vertebrate laboratory models. Here, the authors demonstrate light-independent magnetoreception in mature zebrafish and medaka, as well as magnetosensitive locomotion in juvenile medaka associated with neuronal activation in the lateral hindbrain.

    • Ahne Myklatun
    • , Antonella Lauri
    •  & Gil G. Westmeyer

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Gene expression and behaviours are intimately related, and their interactions can play out over timescales from developmental to evolutionary. Here, the authors review how temporal aspects of gene expression mediate behavioural responses to the environment, a key question in behavioural genomics.

    • Clare C. Rittschof
    •  & Kimberly A. Hughes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Substantial evidence now supports the idea that the ancestral bat was a small, night flying predator capable of laryngeal echolocation. Here, the authors confirm this hypothesis using phylogenetic comparative analyses and further suggest an underlying tradeoff between echolocation and vision in both ancient and modern species and an association between sensory specialization and diet.

    • Jeneni Thiagavel
    • , Clément Cechetto
    •  & John M. Ratcliffe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Africanized honey bees (AHB) are notoriously aggressive, but in Puerto Rico they have a ‘gentle’ phenotype. Here, Avalos et al. show that there has been a soft selective sweep at several loci in the Puerto Rican AHB population and suggest a role in the rapid evolution of gentle behaviour.

    • Arian Avalos
    • , Hailin Pan
    •  & Guojie Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animal coloration and behavior can change seasonally, but it is unclear if visual sensitivity to color shifts as well. Here, Shimmura et al. show that medaka undergo seasonal behavioral change accompanied by altered expression of opsin genes, resulting in reduced visual sensitivity to mates during winter-like conditions.

    • Tsuyoshi Shimmura
    • , Tomoya Nakayama
    •  & Takashi Yoshimura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Non-human animals are known to exhibit behaviours suggestive of empathy, but the development and maintenance of these traits is unexplored. Here, Webb and colleagues quantify individual consolation tendencies over 10 years across two chimpanzee groups and show evidence of consistent ‘empathetic personalities’.

    • Christine E. Webb
    • , Teresa Romero
    •  & Frans B. M. de Waal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nematodes use a characteristic set of movements, called nictation, to hitchhike on more mobile animals. Here, Lee et al. identify a genetic locus in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans that underlies nictation and contributes to successful hitchhiking, but at expense of reduced offspring production.

    • Daehan Lee
    • , Heeseung Yang
    •  & Junho Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While the organization of ants within their nest is key for colony function, it remains unknown how ants navigate this dark subterranean environment. Here, Heymanet al. use a series of behavioral tests, chemical analyses, and machine learning to identify chemical landmarks that ants use to distinguish between nest areas.

    • Yael Heyman
    • , Noam Shental
    •  & Ofer Feinerman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Groups of animals tend to solve tasks better than individuals, but it is unclear whether such socially-derived knowledge accumulates over time. Sasaki and Biro demonstrate that homing pigeon flocks progressively improve the efficiency of their routes by culturally accumulating knowledge across generations.

    • Takao Sasaki
    •  & Dora Biro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Numerous selective forces shape animal locomotion patterns and as a result, different animals evolved to use different gaits. Here, Ramdyaet al. use live and in silicoDrosophila, as well as an insect-model robot, to gain insights into the conditions that promote the ubiquitous tripod gait observed in most insects.

    • Pavan Ramdya
    • , Robin Thandiackal
    •  & Dario Floreano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proximity to criticality can be advantageous under changing conditions, but it also entails reduced robustness. Here, the authors analyse fight sizes in a macaque society and find not only that it sits near criticality, but also that the distance from the critical point is tunable through adjustment of individual behaviour and social conflict management.

    • Bryan C. Daniels
    • , David C. Krakauer
    •  & Jessica C. Flack

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Parental care involves shifts in numerous behaviours related to mating, feeding, aggression and social interaction. Here, the authors show that, in burying beetles, parenting is associated with increased levels of neuropeptides known to mediate these precursor behaviours, suggesting co-option of existing genetic pathways.

    • Christopher B. Cunningham
    • , Majors J. Badgett
    •  & Allen J. Moore

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A characteristic of rational behaviour is that it is transitive, such that preferences are ranked in a strict linear order. Here, Arbuthnott and colleagues show that mate choice in the fruit fly,Drosophila melanogaster, is transitive at the population level and that preferred mates produce more offspring.

    • Devin Arbuthnott
    • , Tatyana Y. Fedina
    •  & Daniel E. L. Promislow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of mature vocal patterns is shaped by parental influence in many animals. Here, Gultekin and Hage show that parental feedback not only influences vocal development, but is indeed necessary for juvenile marmosets to acquire normal vocal behaviour.

    • Yasemin B. Gultekin
    •  & Steffen R. Hage

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Antarctic bottom water (AABW) production is critical to the global ocean overturning circulation. Here, the authors show new observations of AABW formation from seal CTD data in Prydz Bay, East Antarctica that highlights its susceptibility to increased freshwater input from the melting of ice shelves.

    • G. D. Williams
    • , L. Herraiz-Borreguero
    •  & M. Hindell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In some species with internal fertilization, females can mate with multiple males and then manipulate which sperm fertilize the eggs. Here, Alonzo et al.find that by releasing ovarian fluid along with their eggs, female ocellated wrasse are able to influence paternity despite having external fertilization.

    • Suzanne H. Alonzo
    • , Kelly A. Stiver
    •  & Susan E. Marsh-Rollo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mantis shrimps are known to display large pitch, yaw and torsional eye rotations. Here, the authors show that these eye movements allow mantis shrimp to orientate particular photoreceptors in order to better discriminate the polarization of light.

    • Ilse M. Daly
    • , Martin J. How
    •  & Nicholas W. Roberts

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The long-distance hunting behaviour of African wild dogs is thought to be energetically costly. Here, Hubel et al. show that multiple opportunistic short-distance hunts and group feeding make African wild dogs in mixed woodland savannah energetically robust.

    • Tatjana Y. Hubel
    • , Julia P. Myatt
    •  & Alan M. Wilson

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