74 posts · 25,196 views
Associate Professor of Biology at The University of Texas-Pan American.
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- March 18, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 25 views
Are big brains better for long trips?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
For many birds, migration is a major component of life. You'd expect think that migration would have a whole cascade of effects on those birds, including the nervous system. But which way?
On the one hand, migration might be correlated with large brains to handle the the complex navigation tasks. On the other hand, migration might be correlated with small brains that are energetically efficient.
Sol and colleagues compared over six hundred species of birds (measuring over 4,000 skulls). Speci........ Read more »
Sol, D., Garcia, N., Iwaniuk, A., Davis, K., Meade, A., Boyle, W., & Székely, T. (2010) Evolutionary Divergence in Brain Size between Migratory and Resident Birds. PLoS ONE, 5(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009617
- March 10, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 40 views
Rattling neuroethology’s windows
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
As I’ve written recently, I don’t feel all that at home and comfortable in the field of neuroscience. I feel much more at home in the discipline of neuroethology, which investigates the neural bases of naturally occurring animal behaviour. It is populated by people who still appreciate diversity.
Having said that neuroethology is my intellectual home, I would like to rattle the windows in my own house a bit.
Neuroethology has a bunch of great people working on cool stories. And yet it is n........ Read more »
Bullock, T. (1999) Neuroethology has pregnant agendas. Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology, 185(4), 291-295. DOI: 10.1007/s003590050389
- March 9, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 50 views
A neuron for free will
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
The question for neuroscience is how nervous systems generate behaviour and cognition. In general, we think there’s a hierachical command scheme, as the quick and dirty sketch below shows.
It’s been hard to move from general principles and “black boxes” to real neurons. A good chunk of effort in neuroethology has gone into understanding the sensory capabilities of different animals, and cracking how pattern generators could generate the detailed plan for movements, especially rhythmic ........ Read more »
Kagaya, K., & Takahata, M. (2010) Readiness Discharge for Spontaneous Initiation of Walking in Crayfish. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(4), 1348-1362. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4885-09.2010
- March 4, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 52 views
Can jellyfish see colour?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
“Jellyfish? See colours? That’s crazy talk! They’d need eyes to do that! They don’t even have brains, do they?”
Some jellyfish do have eyes to go along with their well-developed central nervous system. These are box jellies, which are generally better known because some of their number contains rather deadly toxins. If that wasn’t scary enough, they have eyes. In fact, they have lots of eyes.
Rhophalia are sensory structures that you can see as black dots about two thirds of the wa........ Read more »
O'Connor, M., Garm, A., Marshall, J., Hart, N., Ekstrom, P., Skogh, C., & Nilsson, D. (2010) Visual pigment in the lens eyes of the box jellyfish Chiropsella bronzie. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.2248
- February 26, 2010
- 09:08 AM
- 53 views
The ant smelloscope
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Blast it, I hate it when the authors of a research article come up perhaps the best possible title.
“Do desert ants smell the scenery in stereo?”
I can’t top that title. All I can do is try to explain a little.
Cataglyphis fortis is a name that is not well-known to many, but to an ethologist like myself, they're kind of famous. This is a desert ant species that has taught us a phenomenal amount about how animals navigate in their environment. These ants, with their small brains, are doi........ Read more »
Steck, K., Knaden, M., & Hansson, B. (2010) Do desert ants smell the scenery in stereo?. Animal Behaviour. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.01.011
- February 10, 2010
- 02:43 PM
- 83 views
I have a big beak and a small tongue: Hornbill feeding
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
In the movie Roxanne, Steve Martin’s Cyrano-esque character has a scene where he’s supposed to drink from a small fluted wine glass, but his character’s large schnoz makes it impossible. That’s sort of the task faced by several birds species with large, lengthy bills.
Feeding is no small task for birds. Keep in mind that birds have no hands to manipulate their food, and a bird’s bill is completely inflexible. Imagine trying to eat without moving your lips.
Hornbills (like Aceros cass........ Read more »
Baussart, S., & Bels, V. (2010) Tropical hornbills (Aceros cassidix, Aceros undulatus, and Buceros hydrocorax) use ballistic transport to feed with their large beaks . Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological Genetics and Physiology. DOI: 10.1002/jez.590
- February 4, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 98 views
Can crayfish feel electricity?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
The sensory abilities of vertebrates and invertebrates are generally more similar than they are different: both groups can detect light, sound, pressure, and so on. One of the few cases of a sensory ability that seemed to be the domain of vertebrates alone was the ability to detect electrical signals: electroreception. Several fish have it, and use electrical signals to communicate. Platypus have it. Electroreception in fish is one of the best examples of
For a long time, people argued that in........ Read more »
Patullo, B., & Macmillan, D. (2010) Making sense of electrical sense in crayfish. Journal of Experimental Biology, 213(4), 651-657. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.039073
- February 3, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 86 views
When the going gets tough, do the puffs get going?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
You would think that having a dedicated set of neurons that triggered super-fast escape responses to get away from fast predator attacks and other sudden events in your area would be something that you’d want to keep around. This is usually so, but it turns out, not always. This is a problem I’ve been struggling with for some time now, and I’m thrilled to bits to find another example.
Fish have a group of neurons that trigger escape responses called C-starts, so called because the fish b........ Read more »
Greenwood, A., Peichel, C., & Zottoli, S. (2010) Distinct startle responses are associated with neuroanatomical differences in pufferfishes. Journal of Experimental Biology, 213(4), 613-620. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.037085
- January 18, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 153 views
The journal article of the future!
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Elsevier is trying a new format for research articles here and they are, somewhat pretentiously, calling it the “article of the future.” It’s always risky to attach “future” to these sorts of things, as it tends to get people bitching that they don’t have their flying cars and personal jet packs yet.
As far as I can tell, Elsevier’s experiment seems to be confined to one of its big flagship journals, Cell, for now. An example is here, which I like becau........ Read more »
Marcus, E. (2010) 2010: A Publishing Odyssey. Cell, 140(1), 9-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2009.12.048
- January 7, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 165 views
Cuttlefish camouflage split decision
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
As I've written about before, cephalopods are the masters of camouflage. But what happens if they have to try to match two different backgrounds? Allen and colleague (containing several members who worked on the paper I wrote about earlier) tackle this problem with cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis).
There's a couple of possibilities. Because octopus and squid and such can control colour on each half of their body independently, they'll try to match both sides. Another possibility is........ Read more »
Allen, J., Mathger, L., Barbosa, A., Buresch, K., Sogin, E., Schwartz, J., Chubb, C., & Hanlon, R. (2009) Cuttlefish dynamic camouflage: responses to substrate choice and integration of multiple visual cues. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1694
- December 31, 2009
- 04:41 PM
- 210 views
Hiding in plain sight: The caterpillar masquerade
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
A short paper in Science offers a new take on camouflage. Usually, we think of camouflage as making an animal hard to detect in the first place. Another possibility, though, is that you can be perfectly visible, but not recognized as the thing you actually are.
Skelhorn and company tested this by taking a couple of different species of caterpillars that seem to mimic twigs (Opisthograptis luteolata is pictured). They exposed chicks (caterpillar predators) to hawthorn branches, which caterpillar........ Read more »
Skelhorn, J., Rowland, H., Speed, M., & Ruxton, G. (2009) Masquerade: Camouflage Without Crypsis. Science, 327(5961), 51-51. DOI: 10.1126/science.1181931
- December 28, 2009
- 08:00 AM
- 146 views
The secret to long life? Don’t have kids (if you're a lizard)
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
It is a sad but true fact that you cannot have it all. This has been known in evolution for a long time, where people often talk about trade-offs.
In a new paper, Cox and Calsbeek test the trade-offs between survival and reproduction experimentally, using female anoles.
Female anoles (Anolis sagrei; pictured) lay one egg at a time, though they do so throughout the breeding season. Cox and Calsbeek captured almost 400 animals, and performed sterilizing surgery on half the females, and sham surg........ Read more »
Cox, R., & Calsbeek, R. (2010) Severe costs of reproduction persist in lizards despite the evolution of a single-egg clutch. Evolution. DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00906.x
- December 15, 2009
- 01:05 PM
- 189 views
I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts’ shells
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Octopuses using coconut shells has been all over the web the last couple of days due to the publication today of a new paper by Finn and colleagues. The title is helping generate the attention: tool use.
This is a cool finding, but it is not as path-breaking as one might think.
First, the authors do note that there have been possible cases of tool use in invertebrates besides octopuses, but argue that other cases are too context-specific to be “real” tool use.
Second, this is not........ Read more »
Mather, J. (1994) ‘Home’ choice and modification by juvenile Octopus vulgaris (Mollusca: Cephalopoda): specialized intelligence and tool use?. Journal of Zoology, 233(3), 359-368. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.1994.tb05270.x
- December 10, 2009
- 08:00 AM
- 183 views
Shocking affairs of zebra finches revealed!
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
We never get tired of finding out who’s cheating on who, if the headlines are any indication. Finding out how much cheating is going on in the animal kingdom was revolutionized with the introduction of DNA fingerprinting, and led to major rethinking of sexual behaviour, particularly among birds.
Go back before the introduction of DNA technology, and the general consensus was the most bird species were monogamous, at least during a breeding season. There were all kinds of good reasons that........ Read more »
Griffith, Simon C., Holleley, Clare E., Mariette, Mylene M., Pryke, Sarah R., & Svedin, Nina. (2010) Low level of extrapair parentage in wild zebra finches. Animal Behaviour. info:/10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.11.031
- December 8, 2009
- 11:30 AM
- 190 views
Genome research: good idea, bad idea
by Zen Faulkes in Marmorkrebs
Good idea: A paper in the Journal of Heredity proposes sequencing 10,000 genomes...
Bad idea: ...of vertebrates.
A news article in Science characterized this in the title as, “No genome left behind.” But of course, it leaves a tremendous number of genomes behind, namely, every single invertebrate. What are the current estimates for number of vertebrate species? Maybe 60,000 or so? The crustaceans alone probably have about the same number of species. The number of vertebrate species is not ........ Read more »
Genome 10K Community of Scientists. (2009) Genome 10K: A Proposal to Obtain Whole-Genome Sequence for 10 000 Vertebrate Species. Journal of Heredity, 100(6), 659-674. DOI: 10.1093/jhered/esp086
- November 30, 2009
- 07:00 AM
- 215 views
For new brain cells, go to the wild
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
For a while, people thought that vertebrate brains did not get new neurons throughout life. Songbirds provided one of the first known counterexamples, when it was discovered that some birds generated new neurons, associated with song centers, every year. Later, mammals were discovered to generate new neurons in adulthood, most interestingly in the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is deeply involved in all manner of learning and memory, but particularly spatial learning and memory. The natural hypot........ Read more »
LaDage, L., Roth, T., Fox, R., & Pravosudov, V. (2010) Ecologically relevant spatial memory use modulates hippocampal neurogenesis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1769
- November 26, 2009
- 01:00 PM
- 278 views
Shell shock: Is the new way to dispatch a lobster a better way?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
When you’re a crustacean neurobiologist, cooking a lobster is a topic you’d better be familiar with, because you will be asked about it. (See posts in February 2005; May 2003; maybe this subject needs to get its own label.)
The Daily Mail has an article on the latest effort to deal with concerns that boiling lobster alive is inhumane. The title claims it’s a way “to kill a lobster with kindness.” This potentially more humane alternative to boiling?
Electrocution.
........ Read more »
Appel, M., & Elwood, R. (2009) Motivational trade-offs and potential pain experience in hermit crabs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 119(1-2), 120-124. DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2009.03.013
Elwood, R., & Appel, M. (2009) Pain experience in hermit crabs?. Animal Behaviour, 77(5), 1243-1246. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.01.028
- November 25, 2009
- 08:00 AM
- 264 views
Come on, let me hear you sing with tailfeathers
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Hummingbirds are amazing animals, but one of their less appreciated talents is their vocal abilities. Hummingbirds are one of the few animals that engage in vocal learning, for instance, which puts them in a small group with humans and a few other bird groups. The males learn songs because, as in other species, the lady birds find a good song... sexy.
Authors Clarke and Feo had previously shown that during courtship, male hummingbirds in one genus, Calypte (Calypte costae shown above; Calypte a........ Read more »
Clark, C., & Feo, T. (2009) Why Do Hummingbirds “Sing” with Both Their Tail and Their Syrinx? An Apparent Example of Sexual Sensory Bias. The American Naturalist, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1086/648560
- November 20, 2009
- 10:00 AM
- 247 views
Extinction through fornication
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Normally, we think of extinction happening because organisms fail to reproduce. In the case of Canadian sticklebacks, some incipient species are going extinct because they are reproducing all too well.... Read more »
Behm, J., Ives, A., & Boughman, J. (2009) Breakdown in Postmating Isolation and the Collapse of a Species Pair through Hybridization. The American Naturalist, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1086/648559
- November 16, 2009
- 08:00 AM
- 210 views
How to act when you might be eaten
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
If you don’t have to worry about reproduction, life gets a little simpler. You have to worry about eating. You have to worry about being eaten. And with that, you’re pretty close to done.
Aspidoscelis uniparens is a parthenogenetic whiptail lizard (formerly Cnemidophorus uniparens), and Eifler and colleagues tested how they allocated their time under threat. To do they, they made six large enclosures (225 square meters) and put in six of these small lizards in. In half of these, the........ Read more »
Eifler, D., Eifler, M., & Harris, B. (2007) Foraging under the risk of predation in desert grassland whiptail lizards (Aspidoscelis uniparens). Journal of Ethology, 26(2), 219-223. DOI: 10.1007/s10164-007-0053-0
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