September 2014

Chimpanzee cultures are mainly constituted of tool-using behaviors. For instance, communities in West Africa crack nuts with stones, while chimpanzees in Central Africa use several sticks in a row to access bee nests. In the Ugandan community of Sonso (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), none of these behaviors are present. Despite their small toolkit, the Sonso chimpanzees recently started displaying a novel behavior, moss-sponging (manufacturing a sponge from moss to drink water, pictured), adapted from their existing knowledge. Network-based analysis showed that this behavior spread through social learning, solving a long-lasting controversy in the chimpanzee culture debate, namely, whether chimpanzees exhibit social transmission of new behaviors or not. See Hobaiter et al.

Image Credit: Liran Samuni

Synopses

A Plant's Guide to Surviving the Chicxulub Impact

Jonathan M. Chase

PLOS Biology: published September 16, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001948

Resolving the Flap over Bird Wrists

Robin Meadows

PLOS Biology: published September 30, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001958

Bind and Separate: How Ephrins and Their Receptors Create Tissue Boundaries

Richard Robinson

PLOS Biology: published September 23, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001956

A Vesicular Protein Important for Puberty

Caitlin Sedwick

PLOS Biology: published September 23, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001953

Symbiosis Plasmids Bring Their Own Mutagen to the Wedding Party

Roland G. Roberts

PLOS Biology: published September 2, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001943

Essay

Epstein-Barr Virus: The Path from Association to Causality for a Ubiquitous Human Pathogen

Bill Sugden

PLOS Biology: published September 2, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001939

Primer

Status and the Brain

Amanda V. Utevsky, Michael L. Platt

PLOS Biology: published September 2, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001941

Community Page

The Common Oceanographer: Crowdsourcing the Collection of Oceanographic Data

Federico M. Lauro, Svend Jacob Senstius, Jay Cullen, Russell Neches, Rachelle M. Jensen, Mark V. Brown, Aaron E. Darling, Michael Givskov, Diane McDougald, Ron Hoeke, Martin Ostrowski, Gayle K. Philip, Ian T. Paulsen, Joseph J. Grzymski

PLOS Biology: published September 9, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001947

Research Articles

Plant Ecological Strategies Shift Across the Cretaceous–Paleogene Boundary

Benjamin Blonder, Dana L. Royer, Kirk R. Johnson, Ian Miller, Brian J. Enquist

PLOS Biology: published September 16, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001949

New Developmental Evidence Clarifies the Evolution of Wrist Bones in the Dinosaur–Bird Transition

João Francisco Botelho, Luis Ossa-Fuentes, Sergio Soto-Acuña, Daniel Smith-Paredes, Daniel Nuñez-León, Miguel Salinas-Saavedra, Macarena Ruiz-Flores, Alexander O. Vargas

PLOS Biology: published September 30, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001957

Contact-Mediated Inhibition Between Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cells and Motor Exit Point Glia Establishes the Spinal Cord Transition Zone

Cody J. Smith, Angela D. Morris, Taylor G. Welsh, Sarah Kucenas

PLOS Biology: published September 30, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001961

Variable Combinations of Specific Ephrin Ligand/Eph Receptor Pairs Control Embryonic Tissue Separation

Nazanin Rohani, Andrea Parmeggiani, Rudolf Winklbauer, François Fagotto

PLOS Biology: published September 23, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001955

Social Network Analysis Shows Direct Evidence for Social Transmission of Tool Use in Wild Chimpanzees

Catherine Hobaiter, Timothée Poisot, Klaus Zuberbühler, William Hoppitt, Thibaud Gruber

PLOS Biology: published September 30, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001960

A Neural Circuit Covarying with Social Hierarchy in Macaques

MaryAnn P. Noonan, Jerome Sallet, Rogier B. Mars, Franz X. Neubert, Jill X. O'Reilly, Jesper L. Andersson, Anna S. Mitchell, Andrew H. Bell, Karla L. Miller, Matthew F. S. Rushworth

PLOS Biology: published September 2, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001940

Action Potential Initiation in Neocortical Inhibitory Interneurons

Tun Li, Cuiping Tian, Paolo Scalmani, Carolina Frassoni, Massimo Mantegazza, Yonghong Wang, Mingpo Yang, Si Wu, Yousheng Shu

PLOS Biology: published September 9, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001944

Disentangling Human Tolerance and Resistance Against HIV

Roland R. Regoes, Paul J. McLaren, Manuel Battegay, Enos Bernasconi, Alexandra Calmy, Huldrych F. Günthard, Matthias Hoffmann, Andri Rauch, Amalio Telenti, Jacques Fellay, the Swiss HIV Cohort Study

PLOS Biology: published September 16, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001951

Differentially Timed Extracellular Signals Synchronize Pacemaker Neuron Clocks

Ben Collins, Harris S. Kaplan, Matthieu Cavey, Katherine R. Lelito, Andrew H. Bahle, Zhonghua Zhu, Ann Marie Macara, Gregg Roman, Orie T. Shafer, Justin Blau

PLOS Biology: published September 30, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001959

Haploinsufficiency of Dmxl2, Encoding a Synaptic Protein, Causes Infertility Associated with a Loss of GnRH Neurons in Mouse

Brooke Tata, Lukas Huijbregts, Sandrine Jacquier, Zsolt Csaba, Emmanuelle Genin, Vincent Meyer, Sofia Leka, Joelle Dupont, Perrine Charles, Didier Chevenne, Jean-Claude Carel, Juliane Léger, Nicolas de Roux

PLOS Biology: published September 23, 2014 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001952

Cover

Studying the dynamics of social learning in a wild community of chimpanzees using network-based model analysis.

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