Zoology articles within Nature

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  • News Feature |

    Stymied in the search for genes underlying human neuropsychiatric diseases, some researchers are looking to dogs instead. David Cyranoski meets the geneticist's new best friend.

    • David Cyranoski

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Nina Veselka
    • , David D. McErlain
    •  & M. Brock Fenton

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Nina Veselka
    • , David D. McErlain
    •  & M. Brock Fenton

  • Letter |

    A phylogenetic analysis of breeding behaviour in birds shows that cooperation is more likely when promiscuity is low — a circumstance in which helpers can be more certain that they are offering aid to relatives. Intermediate levels of promiscuity favour the ability to distinguish relatives from non-relatives. At high levels of promiscuity, no form of cooperation is favoured. Levels of promiscuity therefore provide an explanation for differences between species in levels of cooperation.

    • Charlie K. Cornwallis
    • , Stuart A. West
    •  & Ashleigh S. Griffin

  • News & Views |

    Help from earlier offspring in rearing a subsequent brood should evolve more easily when the mother is strictly monogamous. A comparative study of birds provides evidence in support of this view.

    • Andrew Cockburn

  • Letter |

    A spectacular adaptive radiation among notosuchian crocodyliforms in the southern continents of Gondwana led to all manner of strange forms; in particular, their teeth, rather than being undifferentiated conical fangs, were often differentiated into biting and crushing types, as seen in mammals. These authors describe a new form from the Cretaceous period of Tanzania in which upper and lower dentitions were capable of occlusion, a feature otherwise known only from mammals.

    • Patrick M. O’Connor
    • , Joseph J. W. Sertich
    •  & Jesuit Temba

  • Letter |

    The fossil record of primates is sparse, and many gaps remain in our knowledge. One gap relates to the divergence within the catarrhines — the ancestors of hominoids (apes and humans) and Old World monkeys. The discovery of a previously unknown catarrhine in Saudi Arabia, dated to 29–28 million years ago, helps to fill in some details. This specimen shows very few catarrhine specializations, suggesting that the divergence between Old World monkeys and hominoids must have occurred after this date.

    • Iyad S. Zalmout
    • , William J. Sanders
    •  & Philip D. Gingerich

  • Article |

    Extended cocaine taking triggers several structural and functional changes in the brain that may lead to compulsive drug seeking, but the mechanisms that regulate the process are unclear. Here, a microRNA — miR-212 — is identified that is upregulated in the striatum of rats with a history of extended access to cocaine. The authors suggest that miR-212 protects against the development of compulsive drug taking, and that it may act through the CREB protein, a known regulator of the rewarding effects of cocaine.

    • Jonathan A. Hollander
    • , Heh-In Im
    •  & Paul J. Kenny

  • Opinion |

    Fifty years after setting foot in Gombe, Jane Goodall calls for urgent action to save our closest living relatives from extinction in the wild. Conservationists and local people must collaborate, she and Lilian Pintea conclude.

    • Jane Goodall
    •  & Lilian Pintea

  • Letter |

    It has long been thought that motor control is achieved through the balanced activity of two distinct pathways through the basal ganglia that have opposing effects, but this has never been functionally verified. These authors directly test this hypothesis with optogenetic activation of different populations of mouse striatal neurons, and not only trace functional connectivity but demonstrate opposing effects on motor behaviour in a parkinsonian model.

    • Alexxai V. Kravitz
    • , Benjamin S. Freeze
    •  & Anatol C. Kreitzer

  • Letter |

    Although pheromones and their detection by the vomeronasal organ are known to govern social behaviour in mice, specific chemical signals have rarely been linked to selective behavioural responses. Here the authors show that the ESP1 peptide secreted in male tears makes females sexually receptive, and identify its specific vomeronasal receptor and the sex-specific neuronal circuits activated during the behavioural response.

    • Sachiko Haga
    • , Tatsuya Hattori
    •  & Kazushige Touhara

  • News & Views |

    A simple model highlights the pros and cons of chasing — and escaping — in groups. It shows that, for a given number of prey animals, an optimal number of predators exists that maximizes the success of the catch.

    • Tamás Vicsek

  • Letter |

    Plants or animals with identical genomes in a given species can develop into wildly differing forms, depending on environmental conditions, a phenomenon that is widespread in nature yet rarely described in genetic and molecular terms. These authors show that the formation of additional teeth-like structures in the mouth of the nematode Pristionchus pacificus in response to overcrowding is mediated by the same endocrine system that controls dauer larva formation.

    • Gilberto Bento
    • , Akira Ogawa
    •  & Ralf J. Sommer

  • Letter |

    The European corn borer consists of two sex pheromone races, leading to strong reproductive isolation which could represent a first step in speciation. Female sex pheromone production and male behavioural response are under the control of different genes, but the identity of these genes is unknown. These authors show that allelic variation in a gene essential for pheromone biosynthesis accounts for the phenotypic variation in female pheromone production, leading to race-specific signals.

    • Jean-Marc Lassance
    • , Astrid T. Groot
    •  & Christer Löfstedt

  • News & Views |

    Lévy flights are a theoretical construct that has attracted wide interdisciplinary interest. Empirical evidence shows that the principle applies to the foraging of marine predators.

    • Gandhimohan M. Viswanathan

  • Letter |

    One of the steps in the evolution of tetrapod limbs was the loss of the distinctive fringe of fin rays and fin folds found in the fins of fishes. It is now shown that two novel proteins, actinodin 1 and 2, are essential structural components of fin rays and fin folds in zebrafish, and are also encoded in the genomes of other teleost fish and at least one species of shark, but not in tetrapods. It is suggested that the loss of these genes may have contributed to the fin-to-limb transition in tetrapod evolution.

    • Jing Zhang
    • , Purva Wagh
    •  & Marie-Andrée Akimenko

  • News & Views |

    Losses in biodiversity and the emergence of new infectious diseases are among the greatest threats to life on the planet. The declines in amphibian populations lie at the interface between these issues.

    • Andrew R. Blaustein
    •  & Pieter T. J. Johnson

  • Letter |

    What is the best way for predators to find food when prey is sparse and distributed unpredictably? Theory predicts that in such circumstances predators should adopt a Lé-flight strategy, in which short exploratory hops are occasionally interspersed with longer trips. When prey is abundant, simple Brownian motion should suffice. Now, analysis of a large data set of marine predators establishes that animals do indeed adopt Lévy-flight foraging when prey is sparse, and Brownian episodes when prey is abundant.

    • Nicolas E. Humphries
    • , Nuno Queiroz
    •  & David W. Sims

  • Letter |

    The 505-million-year-old Burgess Shales of British Columbia are justifiably famous for the exquisite preservation of their fossils, and for the extreme oddity of many of them. One such is Nectocaris pteryx, which, from the few fossils available for study, looked like a chordate fused with an arthropod. However, the collection and examination of more fossils of Nectocaris suggests that it in fact represents an early offshoot of cephalopod molluscs — a kind of squid, though with two rather than eight or ten tentacles.

    • Martin R. Smith
    •  & Jean-Bernard Caron

  • Letter |

    The Burgess Shales of British Columbia are famous for having yielded fossils of soft-bodied creatures from the Middle Cambrian period. Although similar faunas are now known from localities as far apart as China and Greenland, they seem to have died out before the end of the Cambrian. Or did they? Here, the discovery of a Burgess Shale-type fauna from the Ordovician period in Morocco is reported, showing that creatures of this type persisted beyond the end of the Cambrian.

    • Peter Van Roy
    • , Patrick J. Orr
    •  & Derek E. G. Briggs

  • Books & Arts |

    Deborah M. Gordon enjoys a photographic paean to individual ants and their rarely glimpsed exploits on behalf of the collective.

    • Deborah M. Gordon

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