Auditory stimuli initiate ascending activity in large fibres of the ventral nerve cord of the cricket, Acheta domesticus, and the cockroach, Periplaneta americana. This auditory responsiveness is reduced during locomotion. An earlier study concluded that the depression of responsiveness was mediated by descending inhibition. However, the auditory responsiveness is reduced during locomotion even after section of the ventral nerve cord anterior to the abdominal recording electrodes. Further, auditory responsiveness of isolated abdomens attached to intact animals is inhibited during locomotion of their hosts. Laminar wind streams over the cerci depress responsiveness to sound, but only at velocities markedly higher than those encountered by freely walking animals. Although the exact mechanism is not known, the depressed auditory responsiveness can occur independently of any descending influences.
In the field: an interview with Martha Muñoz
Martha Muñoz is an Assistant Professor at Yale University, investigating the evolutionary biology of anole lizards and lungless salamanders. In our new Conversation, she talks about her fieldwork in Indonesia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the Appalachian Mountains, including a death-defying dash to the top of a mountain through an approaching hurricane.
Call for new preLighters
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preLights is the preprint highlighting community supported by The Company of Biologists. At the heart of preLights are our preLighters: early-career researchers who select and write about interesting new preprints for the research community. We are currently looking for new preLighters to join our team. Find out more and apply here.
Graham Scott in conversation with Big Biology
Graham Scott talks to Big Biology about the oxygen cascade in mice living on mountaintops, extreme environments for such small organisms. In this JEB-sponsored episode, they discuss the concept of symmorphosis and the evolution of the oxygen cascade.
Trap-jaw ants coordinate tendon and exoskeleton for perfect mandible arc
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Trap-jaw ants run the risk of tearing themselves apart when they fire off their mandibles, but Greg Sutton & co have discovered that the ants simultaneously push and pull the mandibles using energy stored in a head tendon and their exoskeleton to drive the jaws in a perfect arc.
Hearing without a tympanic ear
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In their Review, Grace Capshaw, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard and Catherine Carr explore the mechanisms of hearing in extant atympanate vertebrates and the implications for the early evolution of tympanate hearing.
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