most interesting most read papers

Biology letters have just released a list of their most read papers from June of this year, not papers published in June but just those that were read the most in that month. I thought that it might be a good idea to skim these and pick out the ones that I thought sounded the most interesting/weird and just share the paper and a link to it. I was going to post the abstracts but then I got carried away and chose a fair few, and if you are like me then you get bored when reading long blog posts on the internet. I've also just put a little clarifier as to why I think the paper is cool.

So, in no particular order, my top top read papers (from Biology letter, in June 2014). In addition, by chance and not design, it's also a top 10!

1. I like signal theory and any research that shows deception is pretty cool:

Brown et al (2012) It pays to cheat: tactical deception in a cephalopod social signalling system, Biol. Lett. 8:729-732
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/8/5/729.full

2. Research on cooperation and conflict extends from intracellular to ecosystem levels, this is just a very unexpected area to find cooperation:

Pearcy et al (2014) Team swimming in ant spermatozoa. Biol. Lett. 10:20140308
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/6/20140308.full

3. Hugging trees makes you cool, enough said:


Briscoe et al (2014) Tree-hugging koalas demonstrate a novel thermoregulatory mechanism for arboreal mammals. Biol. Lett. 10:20140235http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/6/20140235.full

4. Work on mate choice in humans usually focuses on things like facial symmetry, height or smell, this work just seems to be very different (and again it looks at honesty in signalling):


Neave et al (2011) Male dance moves that catch a woman's eye. Biol. Lett. 7:221-224
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/2/221.full

5. Just an amazing title, but also interesting work:

Levy (2013) Monsters are people too. Biol. Lett. 9:20120850
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/1/20120850.full

6. An interesting study on how environmental factors can strongly shape behavioural and physiological traits that are associated with sexual selection and mate choice:

Zuk et al (2006) Silent night: adaptive disappearance of a sexual signal in a parasitized population of field crickets. Biol. Lett. 2:521-524
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/4/521.full

7. The results are not really a surprise, but it shows how easy it is to manipulate our emotions:

Blumstein et al (2010) Do film soundtracks contain nonlinear analogues to influence emotion? Biol. Lett. 751-754
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/6/751.full

8. I always like research that can span disciplines, and this work spans psychology, behavioural biology and conservation. The work helps to justify, not that it's really needed, conservation of green spaces:

Fuller et al (2007) Psychological benefits of greenspace increase with biodiversity. Biol. Lett. 3: 390-394
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/390.full

9. An evolutionary explanation for why your hands go wrinkly, who would not love this??

Kareklas et al (2013) Water-induced finger wrinkles improve handling of wet objects. Biol. Lett. 9:20120999
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/2/20120999.full

10. Preferential aggression towards kin, goes against most things I was taught as an undergrad and looks like a fruitful area of future research:

Dunn et al (2014) Higher aggression towards closer relatives by soldier larvae in a polyembryonic wasp. Biol. Lett. 10: 20140229
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/5/20140229.full

Here is the link to the full list: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/reports/most-read