Find research datasets worth reusing
Search datasets from major research repositories and use ShareScore to quickly assess how well each record supports discovery, access, and reuse.
9
datasets available to search
ShareScore release 0.7.1
Dataset results
9 results for “sensory ecology”
Sensory weighting reflects changing patterns of visual investment during ecological divergence in Heliconius butterflies
<p>Integrating information across sensory modalities enables animals to orchestrate a wide range of complex behaviours. The relative importance placed on one sensory modality over another reflects the reliability of cues in a particular environment and corresponding differences in neural investment. As populations diverge across environmental gradients, the reliability of sensory cues may shift, favouring divergence in neural investment and sensory weighting. During their divergence across closed-forest and forest-edge habitats, <em>Heliconius </em>butterflies <em>H. cydno</em> and <em>H. melpomene </em>evolved distinct brain morphologies, with the former<em> </em>investing more in vision. Molecular and anatomical data suggest selection drove these changes, but their behavioural effects remain uncertain. We hypothesised that divergent investment in neuropils may alter sensory weighting during behavioural tasks. To address this, we trained individuals in an associative learning experiment using multimodal colour and odour cues. When positively rewarded stimuli were presented in conflict pairing positively trained colour with negatively trained odour, and vice-versa, <em>H. cydno</em> prioritised visual cues more strongly than <em>H. melpomene</em>. Hence, differences in sensory weighting may evolve early during divergence and are predicted by patterns of neural investment. These findings, alongside other examples, imply that differences in sensory weighting stem from sensory investment as adaptations to local sensory environments.</p>
Weighting of sensory cues reflects changing patterns of visual investment during ecological divergence in Heliconius butterflies
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Morphological diversity in the sensory system of phyllostomid bats: implications for acoustic and dietary ecology
1. Sensory systems perform fitness-relevant functions, and specialized sensory structures allow organisms to accomplish challenging tasks. However, broad comparative analyses of sensory morphologies and their performance are lacking for diverse mammalian radiations. 2. Neotropical leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomidae) are one of the most ecologically diverse mammal groups; including a wide range of diets and foraging behaviors, and extreme morphological variation in external sensory structures used in echolocation (nose leaf and pinnae). 3. We coupled 3D geometric morphometrics and acoustic field recordings under a phylogenetic framework to investigate the mechanisms underlying the diversification of external sensory morphologies in phyllostomids, and explored the potential implications of sensory morphological diversity to functional outputs and dietary ecology. 4. We found that the nose leaf consists of two evolutionary modules, spear and horseshoe, suggesting that modularity enabled morphological and functional diversification of this structure. 5. We found a significant association between some aspects of nose leaf shape and maximum frequency and bandwidth of echolocation calls, but not between pinnae shape and echolocation call parameters. This may be explained by the use of multiple sensory modes across phyllostomids and plasticity of some echolocation call parameters. 6. Species with different diets significantly differed in nose leaf shape, specifically in spear breadth, presence of a midrib, and cupping and anterior rotation of the horseshoe. This may relate to different levels of prey type specificity within each diet. Pinnae shape significantly differed between species that consume non-mobile, non-evasive prey (broad rounded, cupped pinnae) and mobile, evasive prey (flattened pinnae with a sharp tapering apex). This may reflect the use of different sound cues to detect prey. 7. Our results give insight into the morphological evolution of external sensory structures in bats, and highlight new links between morphological diversity and ecology.
Data from: Nocturnal giants: evolution of the sensory ecology in elephant birds and other palaeognaths inferred from digital brain reconstructions
The recently-extinct Malagasy elephant birds (Palaeognathae, Aepyornithiformes) included the largest birds that ever lived. Elephant bird neuroanatomy is understudied but can shed light on the lifestyle of these enigmatic birds. Paleoneurological studies can provide clues to the ecologies and behaviors of extinct birds because avian brain shape is correlated with neurological function. We digitally reconstruct endocasts of two elephant bird species, Aepyornis maximus and A. hildebrandti, and compare them with representatives of all major extant and recently-extinct palaeognath lineages. Among palaeognaths, we find large olfactory bulbs in taxa generally occupying forested environments where visual cues used in foraging are likely to be limited. We detected variation in olfactory bulb size among elephant bird species, possibly indicating interspecific variation in habitat. Elephant birds exhibited extremely reduced optic lobes, a condition also observed in the nocturnal kiwi. Kiwi, the sister taxon of elephant birds, have effectively replaced their visual systems with hyperdeveloped olfactory, somatosensory and auditory systems useful for foraging. We interpret these results as evidence for nocturnality among elephant birds. Vision was likely deemphasized in the ancestor of elephant birds and kiwi. These results show a previously unreported trend toward decreased visual capacity apparently exclusive to flightless, nocturnal taxa endemic to predator-depauperate islands.
Data from: Nocturnal giants: evolution of the sensory ecology in elephant birds and other palaeognaths inferred from digital brain reconstructions
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Morphological diversity in the sensory system of phyllostomid bats: implications for acoustic and dietary ecology
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data and code for: A sensory ecology of fear: Eye size predicts moonlight avoidance responses in Neotropical electric fishes
<p>Data in support of: Eye size predicts moonlight avoidance responses in Neotropical electric fishes</p>
A reversal in sensory processing accompanies ongoing ecological divergence and speciation in Rhagoletis pomonella
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Sensory ecology of the frog-eating bat, Trachops cirrhosus, from DNA metabarcoding and behavior
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
ScienceDex guides
Understand access before you commit
These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.