scholarly journals Re-emergence and diversification of a specialised antennal lobe morphology in ithomiine butterflies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy J Morris ◽  
Antoine Couto ◽  
Asli Aydin ◽  
Stephen H Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Sensory System ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Environmental Cues ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Processing Centre ◽  
Chemical Constitution ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
Sensory Reception ◽  
Adaptive Shifts

AbstractHow an organism’s sensory system functions is central to how it navigates its environment and meets the behavioural challenges associated with survival and reproduction. Comparing sensory systems across species can reveal how facets of behaviour and ecology promote adaptive shifts in the relative importance of certain environmental cues. The insect olfactory system is prominent model for investigating how ecological factors impact sensory reception and processing. Notably work in Lepidoptera led to the discovery of vastly expanded structures, termed a macroglomerular complex (MGC), within the primary olfactory processing centre. These structures typically process pheromonal cues and provide a classic example of how variation in size can influence the functional processing of sensory cues. Though prevalent across moths, the MGC was lost during the early evolution of butterflies, consistent with evidence that courtship initiation in butterflies is primarily reliant upon visual cues, rather than long distance olfactory signals like pheromones. However, a MGC has recently been reported to be present in a species of ithomiine, Godryis zavaleta, suggesting this once lost neural adaptation has re-emerged in this clade. Here, we show that MGC’s, or MGC-like morphologies, are indeed widely distributed across the ithomiine tribe, and vary in both structure and the prevalence of sexual dimorphism. Based on patterns of variation across species with different chemical ecologies, we suggest that this structure is involved in the processing of both plant and pheromonal cues, of interlinked chemical constitution, and has evolved in conjunction with the increased importance and diversification of plant derived chemicals cues in ithomiines.

scholarly journals Field Propagation Experiments of Male African Savanna Elephant Rumbles: A Focus on the Transmission of Formant Frequencies

Animals ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Baotic ◽  
Maxime Garcia ◽  
Markus Boeckle ◽  
Angela Stoeger
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Vocal Communication ◽  
Vocal Tract ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Transmission Efficiency ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
African Savanna ◽  
Formant Frequencies ◽  
Resonance Frequencies

African savanna elephants live in dynamic fission–fusion societies and exhibit a sophisticated vocal communication system. Their most frequent call-type is the ‘rumble’, with a fundamental frequency (which refers to the lowest vocal fold vibration rate when producing a vocalization) near or in the infrasonic range. Rumbles are used in a wide variety of behavioral contexts, for short- and long-distance communication, and convey contextual and physical information. For example, maturity (age and size) is encoded in male rumbles by formant frequencies (the resonance frequencies of the vocal tract), having the most informative power. As sound propagates, however, its spectral and temporal structures degrade progressively. Our study used manipulated and resynthesized male social rumbles to simulate large and small individuals (based on different formant values) to quantify whether this phenotypic information efficiently transmits over long distances. To examine transmission efficiency and the potential influences of ecological factors, we broadcasted and re-recorded rumbles at distances of up to 1.5 km in two different habitats at the Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa. Our results show that rumbles were affected by spectral–temporal degradation over distance. Interestingly and unlike previous findings, the transmission of formants was better than that of the fundamental frequency. Our findings demonstrate the importance of formant frequencies for the efficiency of rumble propagation and the transmission of information content in a savanna elephant’s natural habitat.

scholarly journals Brain regions associated with visual cues are important for bird migration

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 20150678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orsolya Vincze ◽  
Csongor I. Vágási ◽  
Péter L. Pap ◽  
Gergely Osváth ◽  
Anders Pape Møller
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Optic Lobe ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Interspecific Variation ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Migration Distance ◽  
Whole Brain

Long-distance migratory birds have relatively smaller brains than short-distance migrants or residents. Here, we test whether reduction in brain size with migration distance can be generalized across the different brain regions suggested to play key roles in orientation during migration. Based on 152 bird species, belonging to 61 avian families from six continents, we show that the sizes of both the telencephalon and the whole brain decrease, and the relative size of the optic lobe increases, while cerebellum size does not change with increasing migration distance. Body mass, whole brain size, optic lobe size and wing aspect ratio together account for a remarkable 46% of interspecific variation in average migration distance across bird species. These results indicate that visual acuity might be a primary neural adaptation to the ecological challenge of migration.

Abstract P825: Virtual Stroke Support Group: Innovative Approach to Continued Care in Times of Covid-19

Stroke ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne Veenstra ◽  
Jamie DuVerneay ◽  
Laurel Packard ◽  
Muhib Khan
Keyword(s):  
Support Group ◽  
Emotional Support ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Innovative Approach ◽  
Stroke Survivors ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Post Stroke ◽  
Group Sessions ◽  
Stroke Support Groups ◽  
Virtual Platform

Background and Purpose: Post-stroke patients and their caregivers need continued physical and emotional support to adapt to the ‘new normal’. Stroke Support Groups are an effective educational platform for survivors and caregivers to discuss chronic post stroke issues. Stay at home orders and social distancing measures instituted to decrease the spread of COVID-19 made it difficult to conduct an in-person stroke support group. However, social isolation related to home quarantine would exacerbate the emotional toll associated with stroke. Therefore, we decided to proceed with a virtual stroke support group to provide continued education and emotional support to our stroke survivors and caregivers. Methods: Microsoft Teams Virtual Platform was utilized to conduct virtual stroke support group. Sessions were conducted once a month. Stroke Survivors and Caregivers were sent a link to their email to log into the virtual platform. The sessions were moderated by a recreational therapist and various speakers provided educational sessions. Results: Five virtual stroke support group sessions have been conducted. Topics discussed were COVID-19 check-in and discussion, Planning for an Uncertain Future, Brilliant Brain Party: Celebrating Neuroplasticity, Two Sides to Every Story: Left and Right Brain and How Humor Can Help Your Recovery. An average of 10 participants attend each of these sessions. Participants find these sessions valuable. It allows them to be part of the stroke community when they are unable to travel due to long distance, inclement weather and transportation availability. Challenges include lack of experience with technology, familiarity with conference call etiquettes and lack of visual cues related to emotional topics. Conclusion: Virtual Stroke Support Group is an innovative approach to keep stroke survivors and caregivers engaged in their care. We plan to have the option of virtual attendance available long term in addition to in-person attendance in the future.

scholarly journals How children aged 2;6 tailor verbal expressions to interlocutor informational needs

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1277-1291 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIRSTEN ABBOT-SMITH ◽  
ERIKA NURMSOO ◽  
REBECCA CROLL ◽  
HEATHER FERGUSON ◽  
MICHAEL FORRESTER
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Environmental Cues ◽  
Informational Needs ◽  
Referring Expressions ◽  
Actual Usage ◽  
Conversational Skills

AbstractAlthough preschoolers are pervasively underinformative in their actual usage of verbal reference, a number of studies have shown that they nonetheless demonstrate sensitivity to listener informational needs, at least when environmental cues to this are obvious. We investigated two issues. The first concerned the types of visual cues to interlocutor informational needs which children aged 2;6 can process whilst producing complex referring expressions. The second was whether performance in experimental tasks related to naturalistic conversational proficiency. We found that 2;6-year-olds used fewer complex expressions when the objects were dissimilar compared to highly similar objects, indicating that they tailor their verbal expressions to the informational needs of another person, even when the cue to the informational need is relatively opaque. We also found a correlation between conversational skills as rated by the parents and the degree to which 2;6-year-olds could learn from feedback to produce complex referring expressions.

Is the perception of their own odour effective in orienting the exploratory activity of cave fishes?

2006 ◽  
Vol 84 (6) ◽  
pp. 871-876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annalisa Paglianti ◽  
Giuseppe Messana ◽  
Alessandro Cianfanelli ◽  
Roberto Berti
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Spatial Knowledge ◽  
Chemical Information ◽  
Fish Swimming ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Sensory Pathways ◽  
Water Volumes ◽  
Odour Perception

Spatial knowledge of the surrounding environment is extremely important for animals to locate and efficiently exploit available resources (e.g., food, shelters, mates). Fishes usually acquire spatial information about their home range through vision, but vision fails in the dark and other sensory pathways have to be exploited. Fishes possess a remarkable olfactory system and have evolved a refined ability of chemical detection and recognition. Nevertheless, while the role of chemical cues in spatial orientation is well known in long-distance salmonid migrations, it has never been investigated in orientation within local, familiar areas. Here we report the first evidence that fish swimming can be topographically polarized by self-odour perception. When an unfamiliar area was experimentally scented with fish self-odour, the cave cyprinid Phreatichthys andruzzii Vinciguerra, 1924 behaved as if the area was previously explored. The fish preferred an odour-free area to a self-odour-scented one, and when offered the choice between a familiar and an unfamiliar area, they preferred the unexplored environment. Avoidance of self-odour-scented areas would allow effective exploration of the subterranean environment, minimizing the risks of repeatedly exploring the same water volumes. Our results are the first clear evidence that fish can use their own odour to orient their locomotor activity when visual cues are not available. This highlights the possible role of chemical information in fish orientation.

Use of satellite telemetry on small-bodied waterfowl in Australia

2009 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 299 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Roshier ◽  
Martin W. Asmus
Keyword(s):  
Data Quality ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Satellite Telemetry ◽  
Environmental Cues ◽  
Data Loss ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Satellite Transmitters ◽  
Solar Powered ◽  
Over Time

The nomadic or dispersive movements of many Australian waterfowl in response to irregular environmental cues make satellite telemetry studies the only means by which these long-distance movements can be tracked in real time. Unlike some large-bodied soaring species, attaching satellite transmitters to small-bodied waterfowl (<1 kg) is not straightforward because ducks have high wing loadings and need to maintain active flapping to stay aloft. In the present paper, we detail one harness design and attachment method that enabled us to track grey teal (Anas gracilis) for up to 879 days. In addition, we detail rates of data loss, changes in data quality over time and variation in data quality from solar-powered satellite-tags deployed on ducks in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Up to 68% of all locational fixes have a nominal accuracy of less than 1 km, and satellite-tags deployed on wild birds can provide up to 22 location fixes per day and store enough energy during the day to run continuously throughout the night.

Cues Used in Searching for Food By Red-Winged Blackbirds (Agelaius Phoeniceus)

Behaviour ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 46 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 174-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alcock
Keyword(s):  
Sunflower Seed ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Previous Experience ◽  
Agelaius Phoeniceus ◽  
Foraging Efficiency ◽  
Scanning Strategy ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Third ◽  
Close Range ◽  
Initial Tendency

AbstractSixteen red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) were given an opportunity on each of four consecutive days to search for food items partly hidden in a wooden "food maze". The birds were divided equally into four groups. Each group on Days 1 and 2 of the experiment hunted for one of two baits placed on one of two separate rows of holes in the food maze (either sunflower seed bits in the lower row or seeds in the upper row or mealworm halves in the lower row or mealworms in the upper row). On the second day of the experiment the birds' foraging efficiency had usually improved with the redwings requiring less time to find ten baits. This improvement was linked to the adoption of a long distance scanning strategy which replaced the birds' initial tendency to inspect each hole at close range. On the third day of the experiment the birds were offered the same food item as on Days 1 and 2 but this time equally distributed in the upper and lower rows instead of entirely in one or the other. The redwings' previous experience affected their searching pattern. Birds that had been hunting and finding food only in the upper row continued to concentrate their efforts there. Birds that had been offered food in the lower row of holes initially took several baits there before switching to the upper row baits. On the fourth day of the experiment birds were offered two baits instead of just one. Again previous experience biased the searching behavior of the birds. Redwings that had on earlier days been hunting solely for mealworms usually removed many larvae before finding their first sunflower seed bit. Birds that had been searching for seeds quickly took several before switching to mealworms. It appears likely that redwings are sensitive to both locational and visual cues associated with prey and learn to use them while foraging. These results were discussed in the context of L. TINBERGENS search image hypothesis.

scholarly journals Insect behavioral evidence of spatial memories during environmental reconfiguration

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diogo Santos-Pata ◽  
Alex Escuredo ◽  
Zenon Mathews ◽  
Paul F.M.J. Verschure
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Representation ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Mixed Reality ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Insect Behavior ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Spatial Memories ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Novel Target

ABSTRACTInsects are great explorers, able to navigate through long-distance trajectories and successfully find their way back. Their navigational routes cross dynamic environments suggesting adaptation to novel configurations. Arthropods and vertebrates share neural organizational principles and it has been shown that rodents modulate their neural spatial representation accordingly with environmental changes. However, it is unclear whether insects reflexively adapt to environmental changes or retain memory traces of previously explored situations. We sought to disambiguate between insect behavior at environmental novel situations and reconfiguration conditions. An immersive mixed-reality multi-sensory setup was built to replicate multi-sensory cues. We have designed an experimental setup where female crickets Gryllus Bimaculatus were trained to move towards paired auditory and visual cues during primarily phonotactic driven behavior. We hypothesized that insects were capable of identifying sensory modifications in known environments. Our results show that, regardless of the animals history, novel situation conditions did not compromise the animals performance and navigational directionality towards a novel target location. However, in trials where visual and auditory stimuli were spatially decoupled, the animals heading variability towards a previously known location significantly increased. Our findings showed that crickets are able to behaviorally manifest environmental reconfiguration, suggesting the encoding for spatial representation.

Migration distance is a fundamental axis of the slow-fast continuum of life history in boreal birds

The Auk ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin M Winger ◽  
Teresa M Pegan
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Survival Rates ◽  
Reproductive Investment ◽  
Seasonal Migration ◽  
Adult Survival ◽  
Vital Rates ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Migration Distance ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
Survival And Reproduction

Abstract Seasonal migration is intrinsically connected to the balance of survival and reproduction, but whether migratory behavior influences species’ position on the slow-fast continuum of life history is poorly understood. We found that boreal-breeding birds that migrate long distances exhibit higher annual adult survival and lower annual reproductive investment relative to co-distributed boreal species that migrate shorter distances to winter closer to their breeding grounds. Our study uses “vital rates” data on reproductive output and survivorship compiled from the literature for a species assemblage of 45 species of mostly passerine birds. These species breed sympatrically in North American boreal forests but migrate to a diversity of environments for the northern winter. After controlling for body size and phylogeny, migration distance and apparent annual adult survival are positively related across species. Both migration distance and survival are positively correlated with wintering in environments that are warmer, wetter, and greener. At the same time, longer migrations are associated with reduced time spent on the breeding grounds, lower clutch sizes, and lower fecundity (clutch size × maximum number of broods per year). Although seasonal migration is often associated with high mortality, our results suggest that long-distance migration imposes selection pressures that both confer and demand high adult survival rates. That is, owing to the reproductive cost of long-distance migration, this strategy can only persist if balanced by high adult survival. Our study supports the idea that migration evolves to promote survival of species breeding in seasonal environments. In boreal birds, the evolution of the longest migrations yields the highest survival, but at an inherent cost to annual fecundity. Our results therefore reveal migratory distance as a fundamental axis of the slow-fast continuum that predicts, and is inextricable from, the balance of survival and reproduction.

Sensory Components of Behavioral Isolation Between Zimbabwe and Cosmopolitan Drosophila Melanogaster

2010 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daina Ma ◽  
Dean P. Smith ◽  
Zhichao Zheng ◽  
Pawel Michalak
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Sensory System ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Mate Recognition ◽  
Sensory Cues ◽  
Incipient Speciation ◽  
Choice Preference ◽  
Behavioral Isolation ◽  
Males And Females

Successful reproduction requires males and females from the same species to recognize and prefer each other over individuals of other species. Mate recognition is mediated through the sensory systems, and one way speciation can occur is through behavioral isolation via sensory cues.Drosophila melanogasterfemales from central Africa (the "Zimbabwe" morph) prefer to mate with Zimbabwe males over males from otherDrosophilastrains ("Cosmopolitan" strains). Cosmopolitan females typically show little or no preference towards Cosmopolitan males. We hypothesize that alterations in one or more cues detected by the sensory system underlie the mating preferences of Zimbabwe females. Here, we investigate the relative contributions of three sensory factors (olfaction, vision, and hearing) to female mating preference using a number of Zimbabwe strains. Our findings suggest that auditory and visual cues are the most critical to this mate choice preference phenomenon. These results elucidate plausible mechanisms underlying incipient speciation inDrosophila.

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