Biology subjects

Sanguinetti-Scheck, J. I.

Publications and source records attributed to Sanguinetti-Scheck, J. I..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Oro-manual assessment of food preservability in a wild rodent

Animals encounter a variety of food items and must determine their future value and preservability. Because animals in laboratory settings are typically provided with uniform food items, there is a dearth of knowledge on how animals assess natural complex food. Here, we dissect how wild agoutis-a critical seed disperser of the Neotropics-decide whether to consume or bury food in small caches, i.e. scatter-hoarding. We find that agoutis preferentially cache nuts over fresh fruits and, when foraging, undergo a sharp transition from eating to scatter-hoarding. Remarkably, agoutis scatter-hoarded empty nuts with intact shells but not filled nuts with broken shells. This decision was dependent on an oro-manual food assessment, an ecological information-seeking behavior. They used their lips and incisors - a somatosensory fovea - to navigate the surface of the nut optimally accumulating decision-critical sensory information. Together, these findings provide a mechanistic account of preservability assessment in a wild rodent, revealing how information-seeking behaviors support long-term value optimization in natural environments.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Context-specific configuration of orthogonal integrator dynamics for flexible foraging decisions

The capacity to adapt behavior and cognition across contexts is fundamental to intelligence. Context-dependent decision making is an exemplar of flexible cognition in animals, yet its biological basis remains poorly understood. At the neural level, a critical mechanistic question is whether context largely alters the inputs to a common decision process or reconfigures decision activity itself to create context-specific functional modes. To study this problem, we developed a patch foraging task in which mice forage in two environment contexts defined by distinct reward dynamics. Mice made patch leaving decisions across environments using different context-specific parameterizations of a drift-diffusion integrator process. Using high-density acute and chronic neural recordings, we find that foraging environments recruit separate activity subspaces which organize orthogonal coding of context-specific decision variables. Unlike the context-invariant decision coding used for perceptual choice problems, foraging decision variables were encoded in orthogonal population vectors within largely separate neural subpopulations - a subspace configuration mechanism which can support modular learning, independent readout, and flexible toggling of decision strategies across environments. In the dorsal frontal cortex, orthogonal integrators emerge with experience, are preserved across three distinct task settings, and are required for rapid and volitional strategy switching. Our findings establish orthogonal integrator dynamics as a general solution for context-dependent decision making and open a new avenue to investigate the cell- and circuit-level basis of flexible cognition in the mammalian brain.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Two pup vocalization types are genetically and functionally separable in deer mice

Vocalization is a widespread vertebrate social behavior that is essential for fitness in the wild. While many vocal behaviors are highly conserved, heritable features of specific vocalization types can vary both within and between species, raising the questions of why and how some vocal behaviors evolve. Here, using new computational tools to automatically detect and cluster vocalizations into distinct acoustic categories, we compare pup isolation calls across neonatal development in eight taxa of deer mice (genus Peromyscus) and compare them to laboratory mice (C57Bl6/j strain) and free-living, wild house mice (Mus musculus musculus). Whereas both Peromyscus and Mus pups produce ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), Peromyscus pups also produce a second call type with acoustic features, temporal rhythms, and developmental trajectories that are distinct from those of USVs. In deer mice, these tonal and low frequency "cries" are predominantly emitted in postnatal days one through nine, while USVs are primarily made after day nine. Using playback assays, we show that cries result in a more rapid approach by Peromyscus mothers than USVs, suggesting a role for cries in eliciting parental care early in neonatal development. Using genetic crosses between two sister species of deer mice exhibiting large, innate differences in the acoustic structure of cries and USVs, we find that variation in vocalization rate, duration, and pitch display different degrees of genetic dominance and that cry and USV features can be uncoupled in second-generation hybrids. Taken together, this work shows that vocal behavior can evolve quickly between closely related rodent species in which vocalization types, likely serving distinct functions in communication, are controlled by distinct genetic loci.

evolutionary biology↗