A critical consequence of joining social groups is the possibility of social transmission of information related to novel behaviours or resources. Network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) has emerg...

This study investigated the behavioral response of common minnows (Phoxinus phoxinus) to repeated exposures of the sample phase of an object location task, and the influence of individual behavioral ...

Peer review has been the cornerstone of scientific inquiry for centuries and is considered the backbone of scientific quality and rigour (Spier, 2002). Des

Ants primarily communicate via pheromones, and other modes of communication have remained understudied. A new paper shows that fire ant workers employ substrate-borne vibrations to induce the killing and cannibalism of young queens when the colony is starved, showing that ant communication can be multifaceted.

We quantified how self-grooming sequences change across contexts in male common hamsters. Using entropy, linearity, and sequence-network analysis, we compared grooming under three conditions: water-i...

Abstract. Animals often balance asocial and social information strategically, adjusting when and from whom they copy based on context. Yet the cognition dr

Understanding how air-breathing diving animals moderate their dive behaviour when foraging successfully is foundational in the study of their foraging ecology. Yet, this fundamental relationship remains unresolved with previous research pointing to inconsistent relationships, differing nominally according to sex, habitat type and scale. Empirically testing the relationships between dive effort responses and foraging success is further hampered because of challenges obtaining concurrent measures of behavioural responses and foraging success at sea. We compiled a multi-decadal dive dataset from 609 southern elephant seals, including their dive responses (transit rate, and relative dive and surface recovery duration) and buoyancy—changes in which provide an indirect measure of body condition change and foraging success. Using this dataset, we tested how seal dive behaviour alters when foraging remotely at sea. We found that as foraging success increased, seals increased transit (ascent, descent) rates and decreased relative dive durations for a given depth, with no response in surface recovery. Our results were consistent across sexes and foraging habitats, and account for the general effects of buoyancy on dive behaviour. The homogeneity of these findings suggests that there is a general functional response in which elephant seals perform, on average, shorter, steeper dives during periods of successful foraging. Importantly, we can align these results with predictions from the marginal value theorem (MVT), that a forager should remain in a patch only until gains drop below the neighbourhood mean. Our findings have broad-based implications for how ecologists interpret dive responses of wild marine animals, demonstrating the value of seeking independent in situ information on foraging success.

Ethology is a top international behavioral biology journal, covering physiological mechanisms, function, and evolution across all species.

Using data from hundreds of wild pregnant meerkats, Thorley et al show that gestational growth varies widely, is shaped by nutrition but not social conditions, and improves pup survival without short...

Northern cricket frogs (Acris crepitans) are sympatric throughout much of their range with their congener, Acris gryllus, and have overlapping call properties. We used field playback experiments to t...

Male bottlenose dolphins that form friendships age more slowly than loners, new research shows.

Intraspecific variation in sleep site selection was examined among adult males, adult females, and juveniles of the urban brown anole (Anolis sagrei) in Walter “Wolfman” Washington Memorial Park, New...

Generations of Gryllus rubens vary in their mating songs and preferences as a result of different seasonal temperatures. Since the thermal environment keeps changing within each generation once commu...

Abstract. Behavioural diversity is an important but understudied facet of biodiversity that enables wildlife populations to cope with rapidly changing envi