Esa A Ahmad, Helen Reiderman, Elise Huchard, Axelle Delaunay, Vittoria Roatti, Guy Cowlishaw, Alecia Carter
{"title":"Wild recognition: conducting the mark test for mirror self-recognition on wild baboons.","authors":"Esa A Ahmad, Helen Reiderman, Elise Huchard, Axelle Delaunay, Vittoria Roatti, Guy Cowlishaw, Alecia Carter","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1933","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1933","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The distribution of self-awareness across species is important to understand, not only as a matter of scientific interest but also because of its implications for the ethical standing of non-human animals. The prevailing methodology for determining self-awareness is to test for visual self-recognition using mirror-image stimulation and a 'mark test'. However, most studies have involved very small sample sizes, omitted a control condition and been conducted on captive animals. Here, we designed and implemented the first controlled mark test in a wild setting, conducting the mark test using a laser pointer on a large (<i>n</i> = 51 individuals, 135 mark tests) sample of wild chacma baboons (<i>Papio ursinus</i>) <i>in situ</i>. Control tests showed that baboons were interested in the mark, but this interest decreased with age, and was greater in males and towards green (cf. red) marks. However, as predicted, subjects showed no evidence of visual self-recognition, which, given the control, cannot be attributed to a lack of motivation in the mark. Our study proposes a novel, controlled mark test <i>in situ</i> and contributes to the evidence that, without extensive training, non-hominid primates are not capable of full visual self-recognition.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2039","pages":"20241933"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11750390/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143010551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Clinton R Warren, Anthony T Breitenbach, Rachel M Bowden, Ryan T Paitz
{"title":"Responsiveness to cold snaps by turtle embryos depends on exposure timing and duration.","authors":"Clinton R Warren, Anthony T Breitenbach, Rachel M Bowden, Ryan T Paitz","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2445","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2445","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Characterizing how organisms respond to transient temperatures may further our understanding of their susceptibility to climate change. Past studies in the freshwater turtle, <i>Trachemys scripta</i>, have demonstrated that the timing and duration of heat waves can have major implications for the response of genes involved in gonadal development and the production of female hatchlings. Yet, no study has considered how the response of these genes to transient cold snap exposure may affect gonadal development and the production of males. We investigated how cold snap timing affects gonadal gene expression in <i>T. scripta</i> embryos and how the duration of an early cold snap influences the resulting hatchling sex ratios. Results show that responsiveness to cold changes rapidly across development, such that genes that responded when exposure began on incubation day 14 responded differently when exposure occurred just four or eight days later. Sex ratio data revealed that embryos experiencing an early cold snap also require a long exposure (>20 days) before most commit to testis development, suggesting that warm baseline temperatures may lower their sensitivity to later cold snap exposures. These results highlight how individual responses to incubation temperature can change rapidly across development in turtles and have important effects on sex ratios.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2038","pages":"20242445"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11732404/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142984630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kasun H Bodawatta, Tomáš Albrecht, Simona Krausová, Eric Djomo Nana, David Hořák, Ondřej Sedláček, Knud A Jønsson, Pavel Munclinger
{"title":"Cophylogeny, narrow host breadth and local conditions drive highly specialized bird-haemosporidian associations in West-Central African sky islands.","authors":"Kasun H Bodawatta, Tomáš Albrecht, Simona Krausová, Eric Djomo Nana, David Hořák, Ondřej Sedláček, Knud A Jønsson, Pavel Munclinger","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2524","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2524","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The parasite island syndrome denotes shifts in parasite life histories on islands, which affect parasite diversity, prevalence and specificity. However, current evidence of parasite island syndromes mainly stems from oceanic islands, while sky islands (i.e. mountains isolated by surrounding low-elevation habitats) have received limited attention. To explore the parasite syndrome in Afrotropical sky islands, we examined haemosporidian blood parasites and their bird hosts in two Afromontane regions in Cameroon. Analysing more than 1300 bird blood samples from the Bamenda Highlands and Mount Cameroon, we found considerably reduced parasite lineage diversity and total prevalence in Mt Cameroon, but not in the Bamenda Highlands. We found highly specific parasite-host interactions at both sites and these associations showed significant phylogenetic congruence, suggesting that closely related parasites infect phylogenetically related hosts. These parasite-host associations tend to be shaped mainly by duplications, switches, losses and failures to diverge rather than through co-speciation events. Overall, the high specificity and parasite-host association differences at local scales largely agree with the limited insights from other sky islands. Yet the drivers of these interactions differ geographically, suggesting that unique dynamics of fragmentation and isolation of montane habitats can lead to similar patterns of host-parasite interactions that are shaped by different underlying drivers.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2039","pages":"20242524"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11750387/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143010381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Daniel Henrik Nevermann, Claudius Gros, Jay T Lennon
{"title":"A Game of Life with dormancy.","authors":"Daniel Henrik Nevermann, Claudius Gros, Jay T Lennon","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2543","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2543","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The factors contributing to the persistence and stability of life are fundamental for understanding complex living systems. Organisms are commonly challenged by harsh and fluctuating environments that are suboptimal for growth and reproduction, which can lead to extinction. Many species contend with unfavourable and noisy conditions by entering a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity, a phenomenon known as dormancy. Here, we develop Spore Life, a model to investigate the effects of dormancy on population dynamics. It is based on Conway's Game of Life (GoL), a deterministic cellular automaton where simple rules govern the metabolic state of an individual based on the metabolic state of its neighbours. For individuals that would otherwise die, Spore Life provides a refuge in the form of an inactive state. These dormant individuals (spores) can resuscitate when local conditions improve. The model includes a parameter [Formula: see text] that controls the survival probability of spores, interpolating between GoL ([Formula: see text]) and Spore Life ([Formula: see text]), while capturing stochastic dynamics in the intermediate regime ([Formula: see text]). In addition to identifying the emergence of unique periodic configurations, we find that spore survival increases the average number of active individuals and buffers populations from extinction. Contrary to expectations, stabilization of the population is not the result of a large and long-lived seed bank. Instead, the demographic patterns in Spore Life only require a small number of resuscitation events. Our approach yields novel insight into what is minimally required for the origins of complex behaviours associated with dormancy and the seed banks that they generate.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2039","pages":"20242543"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11775590/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143059977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Camilla Caponi, Elisa Castaldi, Paolo Antonino Grasso, Roberto Arrighi
{"title":"Feature-selective adaptation of numerosity perception.","authors":"Camilla Caponi, Elisa Castaldi, Paolo Antonino Grasso, Roberto Arrighi","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1841","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1841","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Perceptual adaptation has been widely used to infer the existence of numerosity detectors, enabling animals to quickly estimate the number of objects in a scene. Here, we investigated, in humans, whether numerosity adaptation is influenced by stimulus feature changes as previous research suggested that adaptation is reduced when the colour of adapting and test stimuli did not match. We tested whether such adaptation reduction is due to unspecific novelty effects or changes of stimuli identity. Numerosity adaptation was measured for stimuli matched or unmatched for low-level (colour, luminance, shape and motion) or high-level (letters' identity and face emotions) features. Robust numerosity adaptation occurred in all conditions, but it was reduced when adapting and test stimuli differed for colour, luminance and shape. However, no reduction was observed between moving and still stimuli, a readable change that did not affect the item's identity. Similarly, changes in letters' spatial rotations or face features did not affect adaptation magnitude. Overall, changes in stimulus identity defined by low-level features, rather than novelty in general, determined the strength of the adaptation effects, provided these changes were readily noticeable. These findings suggest that numerosity mechanisms operate on categorized items in addition to the total quantity of the set.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2039","pages":"20241841"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11775598/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143060385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Latitudinal cline of ocean dependence in a diadromous fish.","authors":"Akihiko Goto, Mari Kuroki, Kentaro Morita","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2310","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2310","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Diadromous fishes exhibit latitudinal clines of ocean dependency at inter- and intra-species levels. A pattern of ocean dependence at high latitudes and river dependence at low latitudes is explained by relative aquatic productivity. Such latitudinal productivity clines may induce geographical variations in life-history diversity within migratory phenotypes. We hypothesized that the lifetime ocean dependency of a regional migratory salmonid would display a latitudinal cline that increased at higher latitudes. Freshwater growth rate decreased with higher latitudes, whereas marine growth rate was independent of latitude. The percentage of adult weight gain at sea was higher at higher latitudes. Relative weight gain (ln(ocean weight gain/freshwater weight gain)) decreased to zero at lower latitudes, indicating no growth benefit of going to sea at the southern distribution limit. These latitudinal variations in life history within salmonid migrants are consistent with the intra- and interspecific patterns and provide insight into the origin of diadromous migration but raise the question of whether the current definition of anadromy may be insufficient to fully capture the complexity and continuum of river-ocean migrations.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2039","pages":"20242310"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11775620/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143060430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anthony B Lapsansky, Philipp Kreyenmeier, Miriam Spering, Douglas R Wylie, Douglas L Altshuler
{"title":"Hummingbirds use compensatory eye movements to stabilize both rotational and translational visual motion.","authors":"Anthony B Lapsansky, Philipp Kreyenmeier, Miriam Spering, Douglas R Wylie, Douglas L Altshuler","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2015","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2015","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To maintain stable vision, behaving animals make compensatory eye movements in response to image slip, a reflex known as the optokinetic response (OKR). Although OKR has been studied in several avian species, eye movements during flight are expected to be minimal. This is because vertebrates with laterally placed eyes typically show weak OKR to nasal-to-temporal motion (NT), which simulates typical forward locomotion, compared with temporal-to-nasal motion (TN), which simulates atypical backward locomotion. This OKR asymmetry is also reflected in the pretectum, wherein neurons sensitive to global visual motion also exhibit a TN bias. Hummingbirds, however, stabilize visual motion in all directions through whole-body movements and are unique among vertebrates in that they lack a pretectal bias. We therefore predicted that OKR in hummingbirds would be symmetrical. We measured OKR in restrained hummingbirds by presenting gratings drifting across a range of speeds. OKR in hummingbirds was asymmetrical, although the direction of asymmetry varied with stimulus speed. Hummingbirds moved their eyes largely independently of one another. Consistent with weak eye-to-eye coupling, hummingbirds also exhibited disjunctive OKR to visual motion simulating forward and backward translation. This unexpected oculomotor behaviour, previously unexplored in birds, suggests a potential role for compensatory eye movements during flight.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2038","pages":"20242015"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11732407/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142984622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bart Kempenaers, Mihai Valcu, Theunis Piersma, Peter Santema, Raf Vervoort
{"title":"Large-scale sampling of potential breeding sites in male ruffs.","authors":"Bart Kempenaers, Mihai Valcu, Theunis Piersma, Peter Santema, Raf Vervoort","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2225","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The traditional narrative of the life cycle of migratory birds is that individuals perform long-distance movements between a breeding and a wintering site, but are largely resident at those sites. Although this pattern may apply to socially monogamous species with biparental care, in polygamous systems, the sex that only provides gametes may benefit from continuing to move and sample several potential breeding sites during a single breeding season. Such behaviour would blur the distinction between migration and breeding. We used satellite telemetry to study movements during the breeding season of males of the ruff <i>Calidris pugnax</i>, a lekking wader with a polygynous mating system and female-only parental care. Ruffs have a unique life-history, with three distinct genetically determined male mating strategies: aggressive 'independents', submissive 'satellites', and female-mimicking 'faeders'. Within the breeding season, ruff males visited up to 23 sites (median: 11) and travelled up to 9029 km (median: 4435 km) covering a considerable part of their known breeding range. All three male morphs displayed breeding site sampling, indicating that they might gain similar benefits from this behaviour. Our findings suggest that large-scale breeding range sampling may be a common feature of migratory species with female-only care and strong male-male competition.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2038","pages":"20242225"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11706662/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142953897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spur-winged lapwings show spatial behavioural types with different mobility and exploration between urban and rural individuals.","authors":"Michael Bar-Ziv, Hilla Ziv, Mookie Breuer, Eitam Arnon, Assaf Uzan, Orr Spiegel","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2471","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding how wildlife responds to the spread of human-dominated habitats is a major challenge in ecology. It is still poorly understood how urban areas affect wildlife space-use patterns and consistent intra-specific behavioural differences (i.e. behavioural types; BTs), which in turn shape various ecological processes. To address these questions, we investigated the movements of a common resident wader, the spur-winged lapwing (<i>Vanellus spinosus</i>), hypothesizing that urban individuals will be more mobile than rural ones. We used an ATLAS tracking system to track many (<i>n </i>= 135) individuals at a high resolution over several months each. We first established that daily movement indices show consistent differences among individuals, acting as spatial-BTs. Then focusing on the two main principle components of lapwings' daily movements-mobility and position along the exploration-exploitation gradient-we investigated how these BTs are shaped by urbanization, season (nesting versus non-nesting) and sex. We found that urban lapwings were indeed more mobile in both seasons. Furthermore, urban females were less explorative than rural females, especially during the nesting season. These results highlight how urbanization affects wildlife behaviour, even of apparently urban-resilient avian residents. This underscores the need to consider possible behavioural consequences that are only apparent through advanced tracking methods.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2038","pages":"20242471"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11706648/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142953901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A hydrodynamic antenna: novel lateral line system in the tail of myliobatid stingrays.","authors":"Júlia Chaumel, George V Lauder","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2192","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2192","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Eagle rays, cownose rays and manta rays (order Myliobatiformes) have a slender tail that can be longer than the animal's body length, but its function and structure are unknown. Using histology, immunohistochemistry and three-dimensional imaging with micro-computed tomography scans, we describe the anatomy and function of the tail in <i>Rhinoptera bonasus</i>, the cownose ray. The tail is an extension of the vertebral column with unique morphological specializations. Along the tail behind the barb, vertebral centra are absent and neural and haemal arches fuse to form a solid mineralized structure that we describe for the first time and term <i>caudal synarcual</i>, which imparts passive stiffness to the tail, reducing bending. Two lateral line canals connected to an extensive tubule network extend along both sides of the tail. Tubules branch from the lateral line canal toward the dorsal and ventral tail surfaces, opening to the surrounding water via pores. A continuous neuromast is located within each lateral line canal, maintaining an uninterrupted structure along the entire tail. The complex lateral line mechanosensory system in the tail of <i>R. bonasus</i> supports the hypothesis that the tail functions like a hydrodynamic sensory antenna and may play an important role in their behavioural and functional ecology.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"292 2039","pages":"20242192"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11750402/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143010324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}