Issues

Summary: The measurement of light and color has become easier over the past 20 years, but remains conceptually subtle. This Commentary addresses both conceptual and technical issues to help biologists measure light and color in their research.

Highlighted Article: Passive paracellular absorption of glucose is extensive in nectarivorous bats and necessary to support high glucose fluxes hypothesized for the sugar oxidation cascade.

Summary: Social stimulation in male zebra finches increases hypothalamic activity and reproductive behaviors while not activating expression of hormones in the reproductive axis.

Summary: Individual salt preferences of honey bee water foragers were not known. Using the proboscis extension reflex response, we found significant preferences for specific concentrations of Na, Mg, K and phosphate salts.

Highlighted Article: Multiple assays show that fluoxetine alters boldness on multiple levels and over time in male Siamese fighting fish. This altered boldness could generate negative fitness consequences.

Summary: Fur removal increases both energy budget and reproductive output at peak lactation in a non-laboratory rodent, the bank vole, supporting the heat dissipation limit theory.

Summary: A naturally occurring substance (flavanol epicatechin, contained in chocolate) can immediately reverse a behavioural state whose phenotype prevents learning and memory formation.

Highlighted Article: More fat, live longer: positive association between fat content and lifespan in ants.

Summary: Expression and adaptive evolution of the cell proliferation-related transcription factor ZBED1 in the horseshoe bat shows that it has a potential role in hibernation.

Summary: Dolphin hearing sensation levels, measured just before a loud sound, dampen more when the animal does not know when the loud sound will arrive than when the arrival time is fixed and predictable.

Highlighted Article: Sprinters with a unilateral leg amputation run slower on curves with their affected leg on the inside, compared with curves with the affected leg on the outside.

Summary: Heat tolerance and evaporative cooling capacity in a passerine bird varies among populations, with individuals at a hot arid site showing significant seasonal acclimatisation.

Summary: Starved of food and light, corals can reduce their metabolism, lose biomass and maintain skeletogenesis; this strategy can be explained by the dynamics of structural and reserve biomass.

Summary: Bats are capable of adjusting their vocal tract to shape the spectral structure of their echolocation calls in response to interfering noise.

Summary: The present study is the first to describe a highly conserved HCN-like potassium channel to be involved in acid-base and ammonia regulation in an invertebrate branchial epithelium.

Summary: The presence of bacteria increases successful development of Daphnia magna resting eggs at an elevated temperature.