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Key thinkers about physics and nature. a Professor Albert Einstein in 1947. From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. b Professor Karl von Frisch observing bees. From Wikipedia By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50796040
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The work of the Nobel Laureate Karl von Frisch , the founder of this journal, was seminal in many ways. He established the honeybee as a key animal model for experimental behavioural studies on sensory perception, learning and memory, and first correctly interpreted its famous dance communication. Here, we report on a previously unknown letter by t...
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... His first paper, a physiological characterization of a phasic-tonic proprioceptor in the telson of the crayfish, appeared 60 years ago (Barth 1964). His last papers, including the most frequently accessed article of the last 100 years (Dyer et al. 2021), were published in 2021. In total, Barth has authored 64 publications in JCPA, which distinguishes him as the most prolific JCPA author of all times. ...
The Journal of Comparative Physiology A is the premier peer-reviewed scientific journal in comparative physiology, in particular sensory physiology, neurophysiology, and neuroethology. Founded in 1924 by Karl von Frisch and Alfred Kühn, it celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024. During these 100 years, many of the landmark achievements in these disciplines were published in this journal. To commemorate these accomplishments, we have compiled a list of the Top 100 Authors over these 100 years, representing approximately 1% of all its authors. To select these individuals, three performance criteria were applied: number of publications, total number of citations attracted by these articles, and mean citation rate of the papers published by each author. The resulting list of the Top 100 Authors provides a fascinating insight into the history of the disciplines covered by the Journal of Comparative Physiology A and into the academic careers of many of their leading representatives.
... Although most of the mechanisms of animal navigation are founded in principles and ideas from physics, I believe all this remains rather unknown to the physics community. After having decided on the subject, I was very excited to learn the recent news about the discovery of a long-lost letter from Albert Einstein addressed to Prof. Karl von Frisch, 1973 (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) on this subject that was published by a group of Australian researchers [2]. In this unknown letter, Einstein discusses the possibility of finding a link between physics and biology, writing "It is thinkable that the investigation of the behaviour of migratory birds and carrier pigeons may someday lead to the understanding of some physical process which is not yet known." ...
Animal navigation is a fascinating research field where scientists have been attempting to answer some key and basic questions explaining the mechanisms behind it. Interestingly, most of the scientific explanations for the orientation and navigation of numerous animals derive from ideas in physics. Accordingly, the main purpose of this Special Issue is to provide a general overview of this field and show, mostly to the physics community, the enormous interest of this interdisciplinary field and all its possible connections to diverse physics disciplines. It would be delightful if this could stimulate future research collaborations among physicists in this interdisciplinary research area.
... Approximately one million searches per month are carried out on Google using the term 'Albert Einstein', whereas over the same time typically about 2000 searches are conducted related to 'Karl von Frisch' (data based on an analysis performed by using Google Trends Supercharged-Glimpse on December 6, 2022). Springer Nature had informed the media about the Dyer et al. (2021) paper shortly before its publication in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A. This press release resulted in global reporting by dozens of news outlets, and the mentions in hundreds of tweets and blogs, of the discovery of a previously unknown letter written by Albert Einstein-a story that prompted, in turn, widespread access of the article published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A. ...
During the 99 years of its history, the Journal of Comparative Physiology A has published many of the most influential papers in comparative physiology and related disciplines. To celebrate this achievement of the journal’s authors, annual Editors’
Choice Awards and Readers’ Choice Awards are presented. The winners of the 2023 Editors’ Choice Awards are ‘Contact chemoreception in multi‑modal sensing of prey by Octopus’ by Buresch et al. (J Comp Physiol A 208:435–442, 2022) in the
Original Paper category; and ‘Magnetic maps in animal navigation’ by Lohmann et al. (J Comp Physiol A 208:41–67, 2022) in the Review/Review-History Article category. The winners of the 2023 Readers’ Choice Awards are ‘Coping with the cold
and fighting the heat: thermal homeostasis of a superorganism, the honeybee colony’ by Stabentheiner et al. (J Comp Physiol A 207:337–351; 2021) in the Original Paper category; and ‘Einstein, von Frisch and the honeybee: a historical letter comes
to light’ by Dyer et al. (J Comp Physiol A 207:449–456, 2021) in the Review/Review-History category.
... Self-propelled particles (SPPs) and animal mobility have attracted a large amount of attention from various disciplines, including biology, physics and mathematics alike. Recently, it has surfaced that even Albert Einstein was convinced that the study of animal navigation and movement could inspire the beginning of a new physics [1]. Then the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for the first time to the study of Complex Systems and was shared by Giorgio Parisi, who has been actively involved in the study of the physics of animal collective motion [2][3][4][5][6][7]. ...
The study of self-propelled particles is a fast growing research topic where biological inspired movement is increasingly becoming of much interest. A relevant example is the collective motion of social insects, whose variety and complexity offer fertile grounds for theoretical abstractions. It has been demonstrated that the collective motion involved in the searching behaviour of termites is consistent with self-similarity, anomalous diffusion and Lévy walks. In this work we use visibility graphs –a method that maps time series into graphs and quantifies the signal complexity via graph topological metrics– in the context of social insects foraging trajectories extracted from experiments. Our analysis indicates that the patterns observed for isolated termites change qualitatively when the termite density is increased, and such change cannot be explained by jamming effects only, pointing to collective effects emerging due to non-trivial foraging interactions between insects as the cause. Moreover, we find that such onset of complexity is maximised for intermediate termite densities.
... Overall, this study provides a rigorous, mathematically backed method to infer the size of a realistic collective from measurements of some of its units, whose random motion contains the footprints of the entire system. The theoretical underpinnings of the method provide further evidence for the analogies identified by Einstein between interdisciplinary research in the collective behavior of animal groups and modern physics 35 . ...
Inferring the size of a collective from the motion of a few accessible units is a fundamental problem in network science and interdisciplinary physics. Here, we recognize stochasticity as the commodity traded in the units’ interactions. Drawing inspiration from the work of Einstein-Perrin-Smoluchowski on the discontinuous structure of matter, we use the random motion of one unit to identify the footprint of every other unit. Just as the Avogadro’s number can be determined from the Brownian motion of a suspended particle in a liquid, the size of the collective can be inferred from the random motion of any unit. For self-propelled Vicsek particles, we demonstrate an inverse proportionality between the diffusion coefficient of the heading of any particle and the size of the collective. We provide a rigorous method to infer the size of a collective from measurements of a few units, strengthening the link between physics and collective behavior.
... Animals use the EMF to move onward, which could function amidst troubles due to fog, rain, and clouds. Biophysics aids in the understanding of magnetoreception (MR) by living beings as well as biological processes (Yan et al., 2021;Dyer et al., 2021). Spatial orientation, along with the EMF, are the basic requirements for the evolution of MR. ...
Few insects have the sensory ability to sense and use the earth’s magnetic field. Studies have revealed a wealth of information on the magnetic sense of some insects. However, the mechanism of sensing the earth’s magnetic field, called magnetoreception, is still enigmatic in insects. Magnetoreception studies in fruit flies, bees, and ants are well-documented. Of two hypothesized types of magnetoreception mechanisms in those insects, one is ferromagnetic, and the other is light-dependent. Although experimental results appear to be consistent with the proposed hypothesized mechanisms it is possible that there is still an unknown mechanism that would explain and confirm the experimental results. Thus, theories explaining magnetoreception in insects are yet to be come out. Magnetoreception plays a role in migration, orientation, as well as navigation in insects. Several sensory cues play significant role in migration. Moreover, our understanding of magnetoreception requires information from various branches of science, such as physics, behavioural biology, zoology, and environmental biology. The article attempts to update the account of magnetoreception in the said insects as well as to identify the gaps in our knowledge thereof.
... Whereas relatively little physiology is known related to the behavior of stingless bees, investigations in this area are interesting especially from a comparative view, given that stingless bees and honeybees are two sister groups. In May 2021, Barth co-authored what was his last regular article, a Review-History paper, in the Journal during his tenure as Editor-in-Chief (Dyer et al. 2021). It includes the publication of a previously unknown letter written by Albert Einstein in 1949. ...
... Only 6 months after its publication in May 2021, this article was assessed 190,000 times, almost the same number that all the articles ever published in the Journal had been accessed in the entire previous year. It thus makes the Dyer et al. (2021) paper the by far most popular article ever published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A, the very journal that Karl von Frisch, who inspired Einstein to write this letter, had founded 98 years earlier-history has come full circle! ...
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.
... In the letter of 1949, recently published Dyer et al. (2021), in reference to the work of Karl von Frisch (Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1973) and the sensory perception of animals, A. Einstein wrote "It is conceivable that the investigation of the behaviour of migratory birds and homing pigeons may one day lead to the understanding of some physical process that is not yet known". A few words that show an insight into animal ethology and physiology that preceded by more than half a century the investigations and discoveries of our years about some animals capabilities (Wu and Dickman, 2012;Lambert et al., 2013;Mouritsen, 2018). ...
We aim at giving a short review of the seismo-associated phenomena detected on ground that in recent years have been investigated as possible earthquake precursors. The paper comes together with a companion article–published on this same volume by Picozza et al., 2021–devoted to summarize the space-based observation of earthquake–precursors by satellites missions. In the present work, we give an overview of the observations carried out on ground in order to identify earthquake precursors by distinguishing them from the large background constituted by both natural non-seismic and artificial sources. We start discussing the measurements of mechanical parameters and variations of geochemical fluids detected before earthquakes; then we review thermal and atmospheric oscillations; finally, observations of electromagnetic and ionospheric parameters possibly related to the occurrence of impeding earthquakes are discussed. In order to introduce a so large field of research, we focus only on some main case studies and statistical analyses together with the main hypotheses and models proposed in literature in order to explain the observed phenomenology.
A polarized light sensor is applied to the front-end detection of a biomimetic polarized light navigation system, which is an important part of analyzing the atmospheric polarization mode and realizing biomimetic polarized light navigation, having received extensive attention in recent years. In this paper, biomimetic polarized light navigation in nature, the mechanism of polarized light navigation, point source sensor, imaging sensor, and a sensor based on micro nano machining technology are compared and analyzed, which provides a basis for the optimal selection of different polarized light sensors. The comparison results show that the point source sensor can be divided into basic point source sensor with simple structure and a point source sensor applied to integrated navigation. The imaging sensor can be divided into a simple time-sharing imaging sensor, a real-time amplitude splitting sensor that can detect images of multi-directional polarization angles, a real-time aperture splitting sensor that uses a light field camera, and a real-time focal plane light splitting sensor with high integration. In recent years, with the development of micro and nano machining technology, polarized light sensors are developing towards miniaturization and integration. In view of this, this paper also summarizes the latest progress of polarized light sensors based on micro and nano machining technology. Finally, this paper summarizes the possible future prospects and current challenges of polarized light sensor design, providing a reference for the feasibility selection of different polarized light sensors.
There is enough evidence to indicate we may be damaging non-human species at ecosystem and biosphere levels across all taxa from rising background levels of anthropogenic non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF) from 0 Hz to 300 GHz. The focus of this Perspective paper is on the unique physiology of non-human species, their extraordinary sensitivity to both natural and anthropogenic EMF, and the likelihood that artificial EMF in the static, extremely low frequency (ELF) and radiofrequency (RF) ranges of the non-ionizing electromagnetic spectrum are capable at very low intensities of adversely affecting both fauna and flora in all species studied. Any existing exposure standards are for humans only; wildlife is unprotected, including within the safety margins of existing guidelines, which are inappropriate for trans-species sensitivities and different non-human physiology. Mechanistic, genotoxic, and potential ecosystem effects are discussed.
