Issues

Summary: Many fish social behaviors generate water movements that are detectable by the lateral line system of nearby conspecifics, suggesting that mechanosensory signaling may be an important mode of communication during social interactions such as reproduction, aggression and parental care.

Summary: Humans are blind to ultraviolet light, but most animals have a well-developed sensitivity to this very short-wavelength range. This Review focuses on how ultraviolet photoreceptors commonly contribute to high-level visual function and are used in both color and polarization vision.

Highlighted Article: Group living reduces metabolic rate in a shoaling damselfish species, while isolation reduces body condition. Social isolation due to environmental disturbance may therefore have physiological consequences for gregarious species.

Summary: Thyroid hormone plays a key role in maintaining normal levels of skeletal muscle force production in carp, but this is not mediated via SERCA.

Summary: Interlimb asymmetry changes the walk–run transition speed on a split-belt treadmill with speed or direction differences between legs; leg muscle activation (neuromuscular effort) predicts both novel and normal transition speeds.

Summary: Despite being a highly specialized transport epithelium, the skin of Pacific hagfish does not contribute substantially to O₂ uptake even when branchial O₂ uptake is severely impaired.

Summary: Wind alters bumblebee landing performance and may preclude optic flow-based strategies for control of landing speed.

Summary: Development of a Smart Mechanical Dipole device that provides real-time measurement of vibrating sphere motion along three dimensions (amplitude, direction, signal phase) and can be used to obtain an accurate stimulation trace in physiological experiments.

Highlighted Article: Analysis of the development of muscle biochemistry that supports breath-holding in belugas reveals that, compared with other cetaceans, they are born with a high myoglobin content that matures rapidly.

Summary: The stereotypical visually guided mating approaches of male buprestid beetles include two stages that use different spectral cues.

Summary: Speed and accuracy of a decision typically decline when the number of alternatives increases. The fast-start decisions of hunting archerfish appear to break this rule and are robust against massively increasing complexity.

Summary: CO₂ chemosensitivity is temperature dependent in savannah monitor lizards, where the proportion of locus coeruleus neurons excited or inhibited by CO₂ changes with changes in temperature.

Highlighted Article: Our model, ants, provides an opportunity to study addiction in a highly social species and establishes ants as the first linked behavioral and neurochemical model of invertebrate opioid addiction.

Summary: The lateral line analogue of squid contributes to successful escape response at the earliest life stages and continues to increase successful evasion by aiding visual cues in juvenile and adult squid.

Summary: Perch from a chronically warmed ecosystem exhibit profound thermal compensation of resting heart rate through increased cholinergic tone and heightened baroreflex sensitivity; the latter may safeguard tissue perfusion pressure when tissue oxygen demand is elevated by environmental warming.

Summary: Repeatability of an individual's performance is necessary for performance evolution. Variation in age and sex affects estimates of repeatability and the contribution of morphology to performance changes with age.

Summary: Discrimination of two kinds of fast click-series produced by Risso's dolphins identifies that terminal buzzes are used for biosonar-based foraging and isolated burst pulses emitted outside of foraging are likely used for communication.

Highlighted Article: Characterization of non-linear elasticity and viscosity throughout the bending oscillation reveals that the shark vertebral column behaves as both a spring and a brake, with smooth transitions between them for continuously variable power transmission.

Summary: Investigation of load transportation efficiency in ants shows that it depends on both their morphology and the transportation method they use, i.e. carrying or dragging.

Summary: Vertical and horizontal information is separated in a marine invertebrate, the common cuttlefish, with priority given to vertical information.

Summary: Basking opportunity strongly affects maternal thermoregulation and gestation length in a ‘nocturnal’ gecko; spontaneously born offspring from a cool regime are small, but consistent phenotypic effects from delayed parturition are lacking.

Summary: Snakes from divergent life-history ecotypes are affected similarly in their response to high temperatures, which induce a physiological stress response and affect energy-regulation pathways.

Summary: A large diversity of jaw morphologies and bite forces exists in the stag beetle family; species with a forceful bite have more robust jaws that prevent elevated material stress while biting during fights.