Natural-Intelligence

A honeybee-inspired study compares centrally directed organisations with decentralized groups whose members allocate work through local communication and differing behavioural thresholds.

A new preprint examines how pairs of homing pigeons establish leader and follower roles when navigating with unfamiliar partners. The work matters because it reveals how distributed groups can rapidly settle coordination roles without a central authority or an established social history.

Research published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology used drone footage and trajectory modelling to infer how Tibetan antelopes coordinate while moving.

A mathematical study of leaderless collectives found that efficient groups need only a small number of persistent risk-takers to explore during poor conditions, while the majority wait for favourable signals.

Research into the ectomycorrhizal fungus Laccaria bicolor found that cadmium exposure can trigger stress signals in parts of the fungal network that never directly encounter the metal.

Honeybee groups carry distinct chemical signatures used to distinguish nestmates from outsiders, but those signatures change when groups are brought together.

A Japanese boy noticed his butterflies seemed to recognise him. He spent two years design an experiment and proved that metamorphosis does not erase memories formed during the caterpillar stage.

Researchers analysing 1,245 natural vocal interactions found that wild common marmosets use flexible turn-taking, matched call-response sequences, brief pauses, and very little overlap across both within-group and intergroup exchanges.

Researchers combined more than 16,000 soil samples with predictive models to map the global density of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks.

Long before the dawn of modern parenting, animals laid eggs and moved on, leaving their progeny to fend for themselves. Now, a study published in Nature uncovers one of the elegant ways that evolution transformed neglect into nurture.