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Cover: The remarkable agility of this diving juvenile alligator, which sports a green inclinometer measuring pitch and roll, is due in part to her ability to control posture by manipulating her center of buoyancy using several muscles previously thought to function exclusively for ventilation (see study by T. J. Uriona and C. G. Farmer, pp. 1141−1147). These muscles are active during pitching and rolling maneuvers independent of ventilation, and shift the location of lung gases and therefore the center of buoyancy. The musculoskeletal complex employed may have primitively served aquatic locomotion rather than respiration, and thus may have evolved when Crocodylomorpha assumed a semi-aquatic lifestyle.Close Modal - PDF Icon PDF LinkTable of contents
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.
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.
