Behavioural Biology

The Behavioural Biology section of Biology explores the biological foundations of behaviour in animals and humans, from its ecological and evolutionary origins to the neurobiological and biomechanical mechanisms that produce it. This section emphasizes how genetic, neurobiological, environmental, and biomechanical factors interact to shape behaviour—including sensorimotor behaviour, motor control, and motor learning as biological phenomena in their own right.

Key topics include behavioural ecology, neuroethology, behavioural genetics, chronobiology, cognitive processes, social behaviour, and sensorimotor and motor behaviour, including the biological bases of movement, postural control, internal models, and behavioural adaptation to environmental challenge (such as altered gravity, thermal, or photoperiodic conditions).

We encourage submissions that integrate experimental, computational, and observational approaches to behavioural studies, including comparative and computational modelling of movement as a behavioural output. We particularly welcome research on the mechanisms underlying behaviour, its adaptive significance, and its evolutionary and developmental origins. The section aims to foster interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers working in neurobiology, biomechanics, anthropology, and related fields, while focusing on behaviour itself as the unit of analysis—even where neural, computational, or biomechanical evidence is used to explain it—as distinct from the Neuroscience section's focus on the underlying neural mechanism, the generic biomathematical methodology addressed in Theoretical Biology and Biomathematics, or the engineering and device-design questions addressed in dedicated robotics and biomechanics journals.