A synthetic, prospective article considers how the fields of sensory ecology and collective behaviour can combine when considering animal collective movements and interactions, and how these fields can inspire each other to advance understanding of animal behaviour, adaptation and evolution.

Several support cell populations balance progenitor maintenance with differentiation in zebrafish lateral line sensory organs.

Semiochemicals activate a subpopulation of sexually dimorphic olfactory sensory neurons.

A fundamental visual computation, the establishment of ON selectivity, is established across distributed circuits, allowing for more robust and flexible coding than suggested by core circuit motifs.

Perception of vibrotactile frequency depends on the neural discharge pattern rather than the afferent type, thus requiring a reevaluation of the notion of Pacinian/non-Pacinian channels in tactile sensory system.

The nonsense-mediated RNA decay (NMD) branch-specific factor UPF3B influences olfactory sensory neuron cell populations, the olfactory receptor repertoire, and antimicrobial gene expression.

Sensory receptors encode stimuli by transiently synchronizing ongoing electrical oscillations, conferring enhanced sensitivity to communication signals produced by large groups of conspecifics.

Building on previous work (Baker et al., 2015), further evidence is reported for a novel mechanism for sensory coding based on the detection of oscillatory synchrony among peripheral receptors.

Sister projection neurons in the mammalian olfactory system do not share sensory synaptic input indicating that lineage-independent mechanisms regulate their synaptic connectivity with the olfactory sensory neurons.

Sensory neurons in the olfactory system develop from two different regions of the ectoderm, the olfactory placode and the cranial neural crest, whereas sensory neurons within the eye and ear develop from just one region.