The cover images of the 2023 issues of the Journal of Comparative Physiology A, as well as its logo image, are presented at full size and high resolution, together with the stories behind them. These ...images are testament to the artistic quality of the scientific illustrations published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A.
Peer review, a core element of the editorial processing of manuscripts submitted for publication in scientific journals, is widely criticized as being flawed. One major criticism is that many ...journals allow or request authors to suggest reviewers, and that these ‘preferred reviewers’ assess papers more favorably than do reviewers not suggested by the authors. To test this hypothesis, a retrospective analysis was conducted of 162 manuscripts submitted to the
Journal of Comparative Physiology A
between 2015 and 2021. Out of these manuscripts, 83 were finally rejected and 79 were finally accepted for publication. In neither group could a statistically significant difference be detected in the rating of manuscripts between reviewers suggested by the authors and reviewers not suggested by the authors. Similarly, pairwise comparison of the same manuscripts assessed by one reviewer suggested by the authors and one reviewer not suggested by the authors did not reveal any significant difference in the median recommendation scores between these two reviewer types. Thus, author-suggested reviewers are not necessarily, as commonly assumed, less neutral than reviewers not suggested by the authors, especially if their qualification and impartiality is vetted by the editor before they are selected for peer review.
The Journal of Comparative Physiology A was founded in 1924 as the
Zeitschrift für vergleichende Physiologie
by Karl von Frisch and Alfred Kühn. Given the marginalization of women in science at that ...time, it is remarkable that the first article in the Journal was authored by a female scientist, Ruth Beutler. Throughout her scientific career, she was affiliated with the Zoological Institute of the University of Munich, which, under the leadership of von Frisch, evolved into a world-class academic institution. Despite chronic health problems, Beutler was one of the first women who succeeded in obtaining the
Habilitation
as qualification for appointment to a professorial position. She was also one of the first scientists who applied methods from physiological chemistry to the study of zoological phenomena. Yet, for many years she was employed as a technician only, and she was never appointed to an
Ordinarius
(tenured full professorship) position. Her most important contributions to comparative physiology outside her own area of research were her support for, and protection of, Karl von Frisch, particularly during the Nazi era when he, as a ‘quarter-Jew,’ faced imminent threat of forced retirement; and after World War II, when her efforts as interim
Ordinarius
were instrumental in re-building the bombed-out Zoological Institute to persuade Karl von Frisch to return to Munich. It was also one of her observations that prompted him to revisit, and revise, his earlier (incorrect) model of how honeybees communicate, through their dances, the direction and distances of food sources from the hive.
The current volume of the
Journal of Comparative Physiology A
marks a transition in editorship. This event provides the opportunity to reflect on the 98 years of the history of the
Journal
; on the ...impact of its legacy on the evolution of neuroethology and the comparative branches of sensory physiology and neurobiology; and on future changes in editorial organization and content.
A frequent complaint of editors of scientific journals is that it has become increasingly difficult to find reviewers for evaluating submitted manuscripts. Such claims are, most commonly, based on ...anecdotal evidence. To gain more insight grounded on empirical evidence, editorial data of manuscripts submitted for publication to the Journal of Comparative Physiology A between 2014 and 2021 were analyzed. No evidence was found that more invitations were necessary over time to get manuscripts reviewed; that the reviewer’s response time after invitation increased; that the number of reviewers who completed their reports, relative to the number of reviewers who had agreed to review a manuscript, decreased; and that the recommendation behavior of reviewers changed. The only significant trend observed was among reviewers who completed their reports later than agreed. The average number of days that these reviewers submitted their evaluations roughly doubled over the period analyzed. By contrast, neither the proportion of late vs. early reviews, nor the time for completing the reviews among the punctual reviewers, changed. Comparison with editorial data from other journals suggests that journals that serve a smaller community of readers and authors, and whose editors themselves contact potential reviewers, perform better in terms of reviewer recruitment and performance than journals that receive large numbers of submissions and use editorial assistants for sending invitations to potential reviewers.
Signal analysis plays a preeminent role in neuroethological research. Traditionally, signal identification has been based on pre-defined signal (sub-)types, thus being subject to the investigator’s ...bias. To address this deficiency, we have developed a supervised learning algorithm for the detection of subtypes of chirps—frequency/amplitude modulations of the electric organ discharge that are generated predominantly during electric interactions of individuals of the weakly electric fish
Apteronotus leptorhynchus
. This machine learning paradigm can learn, from a ‘ground truth’ data set, a function that assigns proper outputs (here: time instances of chirps and associated chirp types) to inputs (here: time-series frequency and amplitude data). By employing this artificial intelligence approach, we have validated previous classifications of chirps into different types and shown that further differentiation into subtypes is possible. This demonstration of its superiority compared to traditional methods might serve as proof-of-principle of the suitability of the supervised machine learning paradigm for a broad range of signals to be analyzed in neuroethology.
Bees are known for their ability to forage with high efficiency. One of their strategies to avoid unproductive foraging is to be at the food source at the right time of the day. Approximately one ...hundred years ago, researchers discovered that honeybees have a remarkable time memory, which they use for optimizing foraging. Ingeborg Beling was the first to examine this time memory experimentally. In her doctoral thesis, completed under the mentorship of Karl von Frisch in 1929, she systematically examined the capability of honeybees to remember specific times of the day at which they had been trained to appear at a feeding station. Beling was a pioneer in chronobiology, as she described the basic characteristics of the circadian clock on which the honeybee's time memory is based. Unfortunately, after a few years of extremely productive research, she ended her scientific career, probably due to family reasons or political pressure to reduce the number of women in the workforce. Here, we present a biographical sketch of Ingeborg Beling and review her research on the time memory of honeybees. Furthermore, we discuss the significance of her work, considering what is known about time memory today — nearly 100 years after she conducted her experiments.
Central pattern generators are characterized by a heterogeneous cellular composition, with different cell types playing distinct roles in the production and transmission of rhythmic signals. However, ...little is known about the functional implications of individual variation in the relative distributions of cells and their connectivity patterns. Here, we addressed this question through a combination of morphological data analysis and computational modeling, using the pacemaker nucleus of the weakly electric fish
Apteronotus leptorhynchus
as case study. A neural network comprised of 60–110 interconnected pacemaker cells and 15–30 relay cells conveying its output to electromotoneurons in the spinal cord, this nucleus continuously generates neural signals at frequencies of up to 1 kHz with high temporal precision. We systematically explored the impact of network size and density on oscillation frequencies and their variation within and across cells. To accurately determine effect sizes, we minimized the likelihood of complex dynamics using a simplified setup precluding differential delays. To identify natural constraints, parameter ranges were extended beyond experimentally recorded numbers of cells and connections. Simulations revealed that pacemaker cells have higher frequencies and lower within-population variability than relay cells. Within-cell precision and between-cells frequency synchronization increased with the number of pacemaker cells and of connections of either type, and decreased with relay cell count in both populations. Network-level frequency-synchronized oscillations occurred in roughly half of simulations, with maximized likelihood and firing precision within biologically observed parameter ranges. These findings suggest the structure of the biological pacemaker nucleus is optimized for generating synchronized sustained oscillations.
Curiosity-driven research is fundamental for neuroethology and depends crucially on governmental funding. Here, we highlight similarities and differences in funding of curiosity-driven research ...across countries by comparing two major funding agencies—the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States and the German Research Foundation (
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
, DFG). We interviewed representatives from each of the two agencies, focusing on general funding trends, levels of young investigator support, career-life balance, and international collaborations. While our analysis revealed a negative trend in NSF funding of biological research, including curiosity-driven research, German researchers in these areas have benefited from a robust positive trend in DFG funding. The main reason for the decrease in curiosity-driven research in the US is that the NSF has only partially been able to compensate for the funding gap resulting from the National Institutes of Health restricting their support to biomedical research using select model organisms. Notwithstanding some differences in funding programs, particularly those relevant for scientists in the postdoctoral phase, both the NSF and DFG clearly support curiosity-driven research.
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