Issues

Summary: A review of the mechanisms known to date that mediate the diversity of responses seen in aquatic prey exposed to predator odours and their associated diet cues.

Highlighted Article: Female Mus minutoides sometimes carry a Y chromosome. This chromosomal change is advantageous as sex-reversed females show greater skull size and higher bite force than XX females.

Summary: Noctuid moth wing position affects neural hearing sensitivity. No significant differences in eardrum movement occur; therefore, differences are hypothesized to be due to internal factors such as muscle tension.

Summary: Demonstration of a new high-speed structured-light technique that can automatically record the 3D surface of a bird taking off to analyze wing geometry and aerodynamic variables time-resolved.

Summary: Vertically barred patterns provide protection for prey from visual predators even when they mismatch the spatial frequency of background habitats.

Summary: An optimized workflow combining light microscopy, electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy reveals previously unknown pigments, pigment-filled organelles and structural colours in spiders.

Highlighted Article: Ixodes ricinus is equipped with elastic claws and foldable adhesive pads which result in a tarsal attachment of up to 534 times female body mass to smooth surfaces.

Summary: Optical simulations reveal how both oil droplets and ellipsoid structures in cone photoreceptors can influence optical sensitivity by collecting or reflecting light. Transparent oil droplets and ellipsoids improve sensitivity, whereas pigmented oil droplets reduce sensitivity.

Summary: Measurement and characterisation of the dynamic flight response of fruit flies reveal that their flight controller weighs visual and wind stimuli approximately equally, to produce flight thrust and adjust the pitch of the abdomen.

Summary: The temperature at which a muscle shortens determines how the work, velocity and power of contraction are affected by the force of contraction.

Highlighted Article: Amphibians maintain internal electrolyte balance through upregulation of cutaneous ion transporters, to compensate for the increased skin ‘leakiness’ that occurs during sloughing.

Summary: A high-fidelity 3D computational model of alligator bite force that can be used for inferring feeding behavior in fossils.

Summary: Polarisation vision in the moths is not confined to the dorsal rim area; the retina of Crambid, Noctuid and Saturniid moths and some dung beetles contains distal photoreceptors with extremely high polarisation sensitivity.

Summary: Olfactory sensitivity to conspecific urine and intestinal fluid depends on the sex and maturity of both the donor and receiver in the Senegalese sole, a marine flatfish, which is indicative of pheromonal communication.

Highlighted Article: Cytosolic malate dehydrogenases of heat-resistant Echinolittorina snails have the greatest heat stability known for animal orthologs of this protein because of a small number of amino acid substitutions that modify structural flexibility at and around the enzyme's active site.

Summary: The escape paths of fish are context dependent, showing more unpredictability when attacks come from closer distances.

Summary: Lower-limb exoskeletons often produce odd adaptations in humans. Muscle-level mechanics and energetics, estimated in data-driven simulations of exoskeleton-assisted walking, can explain why.

Summary: Mya arenaria, Mercenaria mercenaria and Ciona intestinalis exhibit a wide range of suspension feeding rates as demonstrated by a combined experimental and numerical approach to quantifying fluid flows.

Summary: Sea cucumber Cuvierian tubules are a remarkable defence system with characteristics of mutable collagenous tissues, showing initial compliance and subsequent irreversible tensilin-mediated stiffening, which allows them to entangle predators.

Summary: Body-mass scaling of gill surface area of an amphipod is shallower in freshwater springs with versus without fish predators, thus matching the scaling of oxygen demand for metabolism and growth.