Honeybees are renowned for their skills in building intricate and adaptive combs that display notable variation in cell size. However, the extent of their adaptability in constructing honeycombs with varied cell sizes has not been thoroughly investigated. We use 3D-printing and X-ray microscopy to quantify honeybees’ capacity in adjusting the comb to different initial conditions. Our findings suggest three distinct comb construction modes in response to foundations with varying sizes of 3D-printed cells. For smaller foundations, bees occasionally merge adjacent cells to compensate for the reduced space. However, for larger cell sizes, the hive uses adaptive strategies such as tilting for foundations with cells up to twice the reference size and layering for cells that are three times larger than the reference cell. Our findings shed light on honeybees adaptive comb construction abilities, significant for the biology of self-organized collective behavior, as well as for bio-inspired engineered systems.

Gharooni-Fard G, Kavaraganahalli Prasanna C, Peleg O, López Jiménez F (2025) Honeybees adapt to a range of comb cell sizes by merging, tilting, and layering their construction. PLoS Biol 23(8): e3003253.

Read the full article at: journals.plos.org

Andrew W. Corcoran, Andrew M. Haun, Reinder Dorman, Giulio Tononi, Karl J. Friston, Cyriel M. A. Pennartz, TWCF: INTREPID Consortium

As neuroscientific theories of consciousness continue to proliferate, the need to assess their similarities and differences — as well as their predictive and explanatory power — becomes ever more pressing. Recently, a number of structured adversarial collaborations have been devised to test the competing predictions of several candidate theories of consciousness. In this review, we compare and contrast three theories being investigated in one such adversarial collaboration: Integrated Information Theory, Neurorepresentationalism, and Active Inference. We begin by presenting the core claims of each theory, before comparing them in terms of (1) the phenomena they seek to explain, (2) the sorts of explanations they avail, and (3) the methodological strategies they endorse. We then consider some of the inherent challenges of theory testing, and how adversarial collaboration addresses some of these difficulties. More specifically, we outline the key hypotheses that will be tested in this adversarial collaboration, and exemplify how contrasting empirical predictions may pertain to core and auxiliary components of each theory. Finally, we discuss how the data harvested across disparate experiments (and their replicates) may be formally integrated to provide a quantitative measure of the evidential support accrued under each theory. We suggest this approach to theory comparison may afford a useful metric for tracking the amount of scientific progress being made in consciousness research.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

In cellular automata, simple rules create elaborate structures. Now researchers can start with the structures and reverse-engineer the rules.

Read the full article at: www.quantamagazine.org