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When we make decisions, we are often guided by the opinions and experiences of those around us. Yet we actually have quite different preferences, tastes and goals. An international research team led by the Universities of Tübingen and Konstanz investigated how we learn from others despite individual differences. The scientists found that humans tend to treat social information as a recommendation – with some scepticism. They also use it to save themselves costly exploration. The results open up…

Scientists have made extraordinary discoveries about how otherwise-solitary octopuses and various fish species coordinate their hunts: fish serve as guides, finding prey and flagging its location, and the octopus uses its flexible arms to capture the hidden prey.

Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence "Collective Behaviour" at the University of Konstanz have discovered when pigeons sharply recognize a predator and at what moment they take flight.

How do bees navigate when the directions in the waggle dances by other bees are fuzzy? Dive into the intriguing research on bee behaviour, which occurs on the campus at the University Konstanz, to find out this research question.

How are proteins in our cells modified while they are still being synthesized? An international team of researchers from the University of Konstanz, Caltech, and ETH Zurich has deciphered the molecular mechanism of this vital process.

Thirty times the size of the human genome: An international team of researchers led by Konstanz evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer and Würzburg biochemist Manfred Schartl has sequenced the largest genome of all animals, the lungfish genome. Their data help to explain how the fish-ancestors of today’s land vertebrates were able to conquer land.

Information about whether industrial chemicals impede brain development is only available for a very small number of chemicals. A new procedure aims to fix this problem without using animal testing. At a conference organized by CAAT-Europe at the University of Konstanz, researchers as well as representatives from industry and regulatory authorities met with a delegation of the OECD to initiate new legislation.

How different species interact with each other, for example as predator and prey, is by no means fixed and can depend on the prevailing environmental conditions. Which factors play a role in this process is the focus topic of the new DFG research unit "DynaSym", with the participation of the University of Konstanz. The unit's spokesperson is Lutz Becks.

Locusts adapt their sense of smell to better detect sparse food sources in crowded swarms of up to billion animals, as researchers from the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz discovered. They published their results in the journal Nature Communication.