REVIEWS
- Olfactory navigation in aquatic gastropods
Summary: Review of the past research and future prospects for understanding odour-based navigation behaviour by gastropods, covering behavioural patterns, navigational strategies and neural underpinnings.
- Behavioural and neuronal basis of olfactory imprinting and kin recognition in larval fish
Summary: This Review focuses on olfactory imprinting processes that numerous species use to recognize kin or their natal environment later in life.
- There and back again: natal homing by magnetic navigation in sea turtles and salmon
Summary: New findings indicate that long-distance natal homing in salmon and sea turtles involves an ability to navigate back to the magnetic signature of the home area.
- The internal maps of insects
Summary: Insect behaviour can be explained as a combination of path integration, vector memory and view memory, but what is the evidence that these geometric capabilities form an integrated map?
- The genetics and epigenetics of animal migration and orientation: birds, butterflies and beyond
Summary: This Review summarizes our understanding of the genetics and epigenetics of animal migration and outlines a vision to harness both technical advances and comparative approaches to move the field forward.
- Non-Euclidean navigation
Summary: The behavioral evidence for Euclidean cognitive maps is unpersuasive. Recent experiments indicate that human spatial knowledge is better described by a labeled graph, which incorporates local distance and angle information.
- Using on-board sound recordings to infer behaviour of free-moving wild animals
Summary: We review new possibilities for monitoring the behaviour of wild animals in the field using on-board audio recordings.
- The potential of virtual reality for spatial navigation research across the adult lifespan
Summary: This Review describes how virtual reality is used to study spatial navigation across species and discusses the benefits and challenges when using it in older age groups.
- The insect central complex and the neural basis of navigational strategies
Summary: Neural circuits of the insect central complex are involved in guiding multiple navigation strategies, and the emerging core circuit for navigational decisions might provide an overarching framework of central-complex function.
- Celestial navigation in Drosophila
Summary: In this Review, we describe how the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, uses the position of the sun and the pattern of polarized skylight to maintain a constant heading during long-distance dispersal flights.
- The brain behind straight-line orientation in dung beetles
Summary: Insights into the neural mechanisms underlying compass orientation in dung beetles are placed into the context of the mechanisms of other insects.
- Origin and role of path integration in the cognitive representations of the hippocampus: computational insights into open questions
Summary: Path integration is one of the fundamental computations giving rise to the cognitive map and possibly other non-spatial representations in the hippocampal formation and its subcortical afferents.
- Merging information in the entorhinal cortex: what can we learn from robotics experiments and modeling?
Summary: Grid cells related to path integration and vision are explained as modulo projections of different cortical activities. The entorhinal cortex appears as a generic merging tool building hash codes.
- Navigation and the developing brain
Summary: Spatial development in humans takes a decade or more to unfold, and involves tuning initial systems in response to changing motor capacities and environmental feedback.
- The navigational nose: a new hypothesis for the function of the human external pyramid
Summary: The human nose respires and sniffs yet current theory addresses only its respiratory function; the nose may also allow stereo olfaction and may have evolved for this in early Homo.
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Editors’ choice – Zombie ant death grip due to hypercontracted mandibular muscles
Image credit: Melissa Ishler; specimen collected by Kimberly Fleming
David Hughes and his team show how a parasitic fungus invades the mandibular muscles of carpenter ants and forces the zombie insects to clamp their mandibles tightly to a leaf vein or twig before they die.
Commentary - The good, the bad and the slimy: experimental studies of hagfish digestive and nutritional physiology
The hagfishes provide valuable insight into the physiology of feeding, digestion and nutrient absorption by virtue of unusual and unique features of their biology. In their Commentary, Chris Glover and Alyssa Weinrauch discuss the key aspects of hagfish feeding and digestive processes, and highlight the pitfalls of this group as experimental organisms.
Image credit: Fredrik Christiansen.
Peter Madsen and his colleagues find that low-output infrequent calls in baleen whale mother–calf pairs may mediate contact between mother and calf, while decreasing the risk of detection by potential predators. Read their full research article here.
The Peter Baker Fellowship is for post-doctoral scientists interested in marine biology research, especially physiological research. It will provide living and travel expenses (up to £3,000) to spend approximately two months working at the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association, Plymouth, at any time of the year. Bench fees will be waived and a small sum may be available to assist with research expenses. This fund is held in trust by the Physiological Society, The Company of Biologists and the Marine Biological Association. Application deadline: 31 January 2020.
Journal of Experimental Biology is pleased to announce a new partnership with Publons! This allows reviewers to easily track and verify every review by choosing to add the review to their Publons profile when completing the review submission form. Publons also makes it simple for reviewers to showcase their peer review contributions in a format that can be included in job and funding applications (without breaking reviewer anonymity). Read the official announcement here!
The Company of Biologists provides grants to fund scientific meetings, workshops and conferences in the fields covered by our journals. Typically, meetings with fewer than 100 people may be granted up to £2,000, increasing up to £6,000 for about 400 people. The next deadline to apply is 2 September 2019.
preLights - Oxygen supply capacity in animals evolves to meet maximum demand at the current oxygen partial pressure regardless of size or temperature
Charlotte Nelson highlights a preprint from Brad Seibel and Curtis Deutsch, who found that, regardless of body mass or temperature, the capacity to supply oxygen is tightly matched to the maximum evolved demand at the highest reliably available oxygen pressure experienced by the species.