Agonistic behaviors are crucial and ubiquitous among animals for the competition of limited resources. Although the study of aggression has been a popular topic, plenty of studies focused on model organisms, and typically on crayfish and lobsters for crustaceans. Variations of the agonistic behaviors and the underpinning eliciting cues of other crustaceans therefore have not been fully explored. In the present study, we targeted Stenopus, a genus of shrimp-like crustaceans that displays prominent agonistic behaviors when encountering conspecifics of the same sex owing to their monogamous social structure. Using S. hispidus (Olivier, 1811) and S. cyanoscelis (Goy, 1984) as representatives, we characterized their agonistic behaviors and fighting pattern, conducted experiments to investigate the contribution of visual, olfactory and tactile cues to inducing aggression, and examined the effects of antennal and antennular ablation on their agonistic interactions. A total of seven agonistic behaviors were documented, where antennal entwining and tactile contact is the major driver and seemingly important cue, respectively, in inducing agonistic behaviors in Stenopus. Although ablation of antennae and antennules did not inhibit fighting, behavioral changes, such as the prolonged agonistic interactions and the delayed establishment of dominance were observed, suggesting a reduction of aggressiveness. A comparison of agonistic behaviors with other crustaceans showed that certain features appeared to be unique or distinct in Stenopus, including the potential functional overlap of antennae and antennules, a higher aggressiveness of the fighting behaviors, and the exhibition of crouching behavior by submissive individuals. The present study provides a crucial background understanding for subsequent research on Stenopus and paves the way for its establishment as another crustacean model for studying aggression.

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The study of vocal communication in non-human animals can uncover the roots of human languages. Recent studies of language have focused on two linguistic laws: Zipf\'s law and the Menzerath-Altmann law. However, whether bats\' social vocalizations follow these linguistic laws, especially Menzerath\'s law, has largely been unexplored. Here, we used Asian particolored bats, Vespertilio sinensis, to examine whether aggressive vocalizations conform to Zipf\'s and Menzerath\'s laws. Aggressive vocalizations of V. sinensis adhere to Zipf\'s law, with the most frequent syllables being the shortest in duration. There was a negative association between the syllable number within a call and the average syllable duration, in agreement with Menzerath\'s law. A decrease in the proportion of some long syllables and a decrease in the duration of several syllable types in long-duration calls explain the occurrence of this law. Our results indicate that a general compression principle organizes aspects of bat vocal communication systems.

Jürgen Boeckh, a respected pioneer of insect olfaction died shortly after his beloved wife Vera Boeckh, née von Zwehl, who pioneered insect vision. Both met in 1958, at the Zoological Institute in Munich. There, Jürgen worked in the group of his PhD advisor Dietrich Schneider, while Vera finished her PhD with Werner Jacobs before she joined the group of Hansjochem Autrum. There, Vera characterized the spectral sensitivity of bee photoreceptors, laying the physiological foundation of Karl von Frisch´s behavioral experiments with bee color vision. Meanwhile, Jürgen focused on the physiological characterization of insect antennal olfactory sensilla. In 1962 Vera and Jürgen married in Munich. Sadly, but characteristic of German woman at these times, Vera´s career ended after her marriage, while Jürgen moved with his mentor Schneider to the Max Planck Institute of Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen near Munich, which became a famous cradle of insect neuroethology. Vera accompanied and supported her husband Jürgen´s career during his scientific Wanderschaft which ended in 1969, when Jürgen received a full professorship at the University of Regensburg. There, Jürgen became an accomplished German professor, focusing on insect olfaction from peripheral sensory transduction to information processing in the brain´s antennal lobe. After Jürgens retirement in 2000 they moved to Hopfen, Enzensberg near Füssen, where they enjoyed happy years together, before especially Vera´s health deteriorated. Both died shortly after one another during the Corona pandemic. We lost a remarkable couple of insect scientists that will be remembered as pioneers of sensory physiology and neuroethology.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the transport distance and lairage time on behavioral indicators of zebu beef cattle in the resting pen of a slaughterhouse using the focal animal technique. Eight lots of male zebu cattle, Nelore, aged approximately 4 years old, weighing on average 500 ± 28.5 kg-1, from different municipalities, transported by land, were evaluated. The lots were grouped into two categories: short distance (> 500 km) and long distance (> 500 km). Five focal animals per evaluated lot were used in each cycle of behavior observation, randomly chosen, and visually identified. The animal focal sampling method was used, with instantaneous recording, every 5 min per animal/h. A video camera was used and placed at a fixed point in the corral. After slaughtering, bruises and carcass pH were evaluated. The respiratory rate (RR) was measured in two moments, 30 min after unloading (RR_I) and 1 h before slaughtering (RR_F); behavioral data were divided into four lairage periods (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th) equally and evaluated as repeated measures over time. The lairage time lowered the behaviors of headbutting (NCHBs), pushing (PsH), mounting (MT), and chasing away (CA), (p = 0.0001), and these behaviors were more evident in animals transported for short distances in the initial resting times, decreasing as they remained in the resting pen. There was effect of distance on the initial and final pH of the carcass, being greater in the short distance (p = 0.047). There was no effect of distance or lairage time on initial or final RR (p > 0.05). In addition, animals transported over long distances showed less carcass injuries, which were observed during post mortem inspection. It is concluded that animals transported over short distances present a greater number of agonistic behaviors, such as NCHBs, MT, PsH, and CA, predisposing to higher rates of bruising during lairage and more accentuated changes in the final pH of the meat.

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Studying the intricacies of individual subjects\' moods and cognitive processing over extended periods of time presents a formidable challenge in medicine. While much of systems neuroscience appropriately focuses on the link between neural circuit functions and well-constrained behaviors over short timescales (e.g., trials, hours), many mental health conditions involve complex interactions of mood and cognition that are non-stationary across behavioral contexts and evolve over extended timescales. Here, we discuss opportunities, challenges, and possible future directions in computational psychiatry to quantify non-stationary continuously monitored behaviors. We suggest that this exploratory effort may contribute to a more precision-based approach to treating mental disorders and facilitate a more robust reverse translation across animal species. We conclude with ethical considerations for any field that aims to bridge artificial intelligence and patient monitoring.

Although aggression is associated with several psychiatric disorders, there is no effective treatment nor a rigorous definition for \"pathological aggression\". Mice make a valuable model for studying aggression. They have a dynamic social structure that depends on the habitat and includes reciprocal interactions between the mice\'s aggression levels, social dominance hierarchy (SDH), and resource allocation. Nevertheless, the classical behavioral tests for territorial aggression and SDH in mice are reductive and have limited ethological and translational relevance. Recent work has explored the use of semi-natural environments to simultaneously study dominance-related behaviors, resource allocation, and aggressive behavior. Semi-natural setups allow experimental control of the environment combined with manipulations of neural activity. We argue that these setups can help bridge the translational gap in aggression research toward discovering neuronal mechanisms underlying maladaptive aggression.

1. Significant advances in computational ethology have allowed the quantification of behaviour in unprecedented detail. Tracking animals in social groups, however, remains challenging as most existing methods can either capture pose or robustly retain individual identity over time but not both. 2. To capture finely resolved behaviours while maintaining individual identity, we built NAPS (NAPS is ArUco Plus SLEAP), a hybrid tracking framework that combines state-of-the-art, deep learning-based methods for pose estimation (SLEAP) with unique markers for identity persistence (ArUco). We show that this framework allows the exploration of the social dynamics of the common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens). 3. We provide a stand-alone Python package for implementing this framework along with detailed documentation to allow for easy utilization and expansion. We show that NAPS can scale to long timescale experiments at a high frame rate and that it enables the investigation of detailed behavioural variation within individuals in a group. 4. Expanding the toolkit for capturing the constituent behaviours of social groups is essential for understanding the structure and dynamics of social networks. NAPS provides a key tool for capturing these behaviours and can provide critical data for understanding how individual variation influences collective dynamics.