Visual marking in mammals first proved by manipulations of brown bear tree debarking

The rather limited human ability to understand animal vision and visual signalling has frequently clouded our expectations concerning the visual abilities of other animals. But there are multiple reasons to suspect that visual signalling is more widely employed by animals than previously thought. Because visibility of visual marks depends on the background in which they are seen, species spending most of their time living in dark conditions (e.g., in forests and/or having crepuscular and nocturnal habits) may rely on bright signals to enhance visual display. Here, as a result of experimental manipulations, we present, for the first time ever, evidence supporting the use of a new channel of intraspecific communication by a mammal species, i.e., brown bear Ursus arctos adult males relying on visual marks during mating. Bear reactions to our manipulation suggest that visual signalling could represent a widely overlooked mechanism in mammal communication, which may be more broadly employed than was previously thought.

Accessibility to the knowledge on anatomical variations from dentomaxillofacial CBCT

Objective: to investigate the accessibility of open access article on anatomical variations described on cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) using PubMed database. We wanted to investigate how many journals are sharing articles without pay-wall and how many are sharing articles without author publication charges. Material and methods: a search equation was designed with exclusion criteria limiting the search in PubMed to articles published in English and French. The search was performed by one observer. We had found 2228 articles; among them 709 were accessible as ‘full text’. After applying exclusion criteria and after full text reading only 50 articles remained for the review. Results: the 50 selected articles shared 306 annotated (visual marking, explanation like arrows) and 432 not annotated figures with the public. The 76% of articles were single studies on one specific topic. The main topic was endodontics with 22 articles. 28 journals from all continents participated in the effort of sharing of figures on anatomical variations from CBCT. However, only 2 journals were completely free of charges for authors and readers. Conclusions: we have found only 15 annotated and 3 not annotated figures in 2 articles published in 2 different open access journals (without reader pay-wall and without author publication charges). Sharing the knowledge on anatomical variations from dentomaxillofacial CBCT represents an exception in dental literature.