The Chair of the Lib Dems in Parliament, the Solihull MP Lorely Burt, is convinced that her party is determined to press the case for a change of course, and that Mr Cameron and his colleagues are signalling their readiness to give ground.
But, according to researchers who have been meeting in Chicago at a symposium of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, this anthropocentric approach has meant that interactions via vibrations of the ground (a means of communication known as seismic signalling) have been almost entirely overlooked.
And signalling his intention to fight on the Blairite centre ground he said that with the Lib Dems in coalition with the Tories he believed Labour can be a "great unifying force on all shades of centre left opinion in this country".