Independent or convergent evolution can underlie phenotypic similarity of derived behavioural characters. Determining the underlying neural and neuromuscular mechanisms sheds light on how these characters arose. One example of evolutionarily derived ...

It is well established that the expression of many ornamental traits is dependent on the current condition of the bearer. However, conditions experienced in early life are also known to be important for an individual's subsequent fitness and therefore, ...

Environmental factors can determine which group size will maximize the fitness of group members. This is particularly important in cooperative breeders, where group members often serve different purposes. Experimental studies are yet lacking to check ...

Flocking is a paradigmatic example of collective animal behaviour, where global order emerges out of self-organization. Each individual has a tendency to align its flight direction with those of neighbours, and such a simple form of interaction produces a ...

Recent theory predicts that in species where females tend to mate with the relatively most ornamented males, males may increase their attractiveness to females, and hence mating success, by preferentially associating with females that are surrounded by ...

Over the short-term and at physiological doses, acute increases in corticosterone (CORT) titres can enhance immune function. There are predictable seasonal patterns in both circulating CORT and immune function across many animal species, but whether CORT ...

Recent studies have documented effects of plant viruses on host plants that appear to enhance transmission by insect vectors. But, almost no empirical work has explored the implications of such apparent manipulation for interactions among co-infecting ...

Animals use both pendular and elastic mechanisms to minimize energy expenditure during terrestrial locomotion. Elastic gaits can be either bilaterally symmetric (e.g. run and trot) or asymmetric (e.g. skip, canter and gallop), yet only symmetric pendular ...

Biosilicification is widespread across the eukaryotes and requires concentration of silicon in intracellular vesicles. Knowledge of the molecular mechanisms underlying this process remains limited, with unrelated silicon-transporting proteins found in the ...

The tail (caudal fin) is one of the most prominent characteristics of fishes, and the analysis of the flow pattern it creates is fundamental to understanding how its motion generates locomotor forces. A mechanism that is known to greatly enhance locomotor ...

The polygyny–fertility hypothesis states that polygyny is associated with reduced fertility for women and is supported by a large body of literature. This finding is important, because theoretical models of polygyny often differentiate systems based on ...

The ability of many animals to recognize kin has allowed them to evolve diverse cooperative behaviours; such ability is less well studied for plants. Many plants, including Artemisia tridentata, have been found to respond to volatile cues emitted by ...

Twenty years ago, scientists began to recognize that parental effects are one of the most important influences on progeny phenotype. Consequently, it was postulated that herbivorous insects could produce progeny that are acclimatized to the host plant ...

A central issue in ecology is the understanding of the establishment of biotic interactions. We studied the factors that affect the assembly of the commensalistic interactions between vascular epiphytes and their host plants. We used an analytical ...

In a wide range of contexts, including predator avoidance, medical decision-making and security screening, decision accuracy is fundamentally constrained by the trade-off between true and false positives. Increased true positives are possible only at the ...

Artificial light at night is a rapidly increasing phenomenon and it is presumed to have global implications. Light at night has been associated with health problems in humans as a consequence of altered biological rhythms. Effects on wild animals have ...

The location and timing of domestication of the olive tree, a key crop in Early Mediterranean societies, remain hotly debated. Here, we unravel the history of wild olives (oleasters), and then infer the primary origins of the domesticated olive. ...

Interactions between species are important catalysts of the evolutionary processes that generate the remarkable diversity of life. Symbioses, conspicuous and inherently interesting forms of species interaction, are pervasive throughout the tree of life. ...

Prey species possess a variety of morphological, life history and behavioural adaptations to evade predators. While specific evolutionary conditions have led to the expression of permanent, non-plastic anti-predator traits, the vast majority of prey ...

Global biodiversity conservation is seriously challenged by gaps and heterogeneity in the geographical coverage of existing information. Nevertheless, the key barriers to the collection and compilation of biodiversity information at a global scale have ...

Plants are sessile, so have evolved sensitive ways to detect attacking herbivores and sophisticated strategies to effectively defend themselves. Insect herbivory induces synthesis of the phytohormone jasmonic acid which activates downstream metabolic ...

Rationality principles are the bedrock of normative theories of decision-making in biology and microeconomics, but whereas in microeconomics, consistent choice underlies the notion of utility; in biology, the assumption of consistent selective pressures ...

Despite a burgeoning science of cultural evolution, relatively little work has focused on the population structure of human cultural variation. By contrast, studies in human population genetics use a suite of tools to quantify and analyse spatial and ...

Mitochondria are crucial to the hypoxia response of aerobic organisms. However, mitochondrial mechanisms for hypoxia adaptation remain largely unknown. We conducted a comparative study on the mitochondrial hypoxia response and adaptation of the Tibetan ...

Costs and benefits of pleometrosis, as understood from social Hymenoptera, have never been tested in the independently evolved termites. To understand the extent to which such co-founding may be advantageous for colony survival and growth, we tracked the ...

Efforts to restore ecosystems often focus on reintroducing apex predators to re-establish coevolved relationships among predators, herbivores and plants. The preponderance of evidence for indirect effects of predators on terrestrial plant communities ...

Differential coexistence among species underlies geographical patterns of biodiversity. Understanding such patterns has relied either on ecological or historical approaches applied separately. Recently, macroecology and community phylogenetics have tried ...

Bats are the natural reservoirs of a number of high-impact viral zoonoses. We present a quantitative analysis to address the hypothesis that bats are unique in their propensity to host zoonotic viruses based on a comparison with rodents, another important ...

Aggressive encounters between animals often involve significant amounts of signalling before or in lieu of physical fights. When, as is often the case, these apparent threat signals are neither inherently costly nor inherently indicative of fighting ...