Issues
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Cover Image
Cover: White's tree frog, Litoria caerulea, climbing a 13 mm diameter Perspex cylinder. This species is a native of Australia, where it is often found inside houses. Hill et al. (jeb168179) examined the climbing abilities of this and another tree frog species on vertical cylinders of differing diameter and surface roughness, with the aim of elucidating the relative roles of adduction forces (gripping) and adhesion in climbing. They show that these forces combine to provide fast, efficient climbing on smooth, narrow substrates. Photo credit: Aihong Ji.
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Aquatic acidification: a mechanism underpinning maintained oxygen transport and performance in fish experiencing elevated carbon dioxide conditions
Summary: Root effect haemoglobins and plasma-accessible carbonic anhydrase may be responsible for the ability of fishes to maintain oxygen transport during high PCO2 conditions.
SHORT COMMUNICATION
Lizards assess complex social signals by lateralizing colour but not motion detection
Summary: Multicomponent social signals are analysed separately in the two brain hemispheres in lizards wherein laterality is observed in response to social colour stimuli but not in response to motion stimuli.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Limits to sustained energy intake. XXVII. Trade-offs between first and second litters in lactating mice support the ecological context hypothesis
Highlighted Article: Data from this paper indicate that there may be a ‘soft’ limit dependent on female ‘choice’ on energy allocation to their litters, rather than a ‘hard’, unbreachable limit defined by aspects of maternal physiology as is commonly assumed.
Negligible differences in metabolism and thermal tolerance between diploid and triploid Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)
Summary: Triploid juvenile Atlantic salmon achieve similar aerobic capacities and critical thermal maxima to those of their diploid conspecifics.
Pheromones modulate responsiveness to a noxious stimulus in honey bees
Highlighted Article: Alarm and aggregation pheromones modulate the subjective evaluation of aversive stimuli in an insect, thus contributing to behavioral plasticity beyond their stereotyped role as chemical messengers.
Cold temperature represses daily rhythms in the liver transcriptome of a stenothermal teleost under decreasing day length
Summary: Transcriptomic profiling of liver tissue in a cold-adapted fish suggests tight coupling of temperature responses and daily rhythms.
The biomechanics of tree frogs climbing curved surfaces: a gripping problem
Highlighted Article: In climbing tree frogs where both adhesion and gripping are possible, they combine to achieve faster, more efficient movement, involving tubercles as well as toe pads.
Carbonic anhydrase expression in the branchial ionocytes of rainbow trout
Summary: To compensate for acid–base disturbances, teleost fish activate acid- and/or base-transporting mechanisms at the gill. In trout, the abundance of ionocyte types, as well as the proportion of ionocytes that expresses carbonic anhydrase are altered to respond to acid–base disturbances.
Auditory neural networks involved in attention modulation prefer biologically significant sounds and exhibit sexual dimorphism in anurans
Summary: Investigation of auditory attention networks in the Emei music frog (Babina daunchina) supports the idea that the frog brain allocates neural attention resources to attractive sounds and that such processing is sexually dimorphic.
Disembodying the invisible: electrocommunication and social interactions by passive reception of a moving playback signal
Summary: Mormyrid weakly electric fish can track a moving source of electric communication signals relying only on their passive electrosensory modality.
Through the eye of a lizard: hue discrimination in a lizard with ventral polymorphic coloration
Summary: Podarcis muralis are able to discriminate hue differences matching their own ventral colour variation; this has implications for unravelling the evolution and adaptive significance of colour polymorphisms.
Benefits of hyperbaric oxygen pretreatment for decompression sickness in Bama pigs
Summary: Hyperbaric oxygen pretreatment 18 h prior to diving significantly reduces the risk of decompression sickness in a swine model; heat shock protein induction is proposed as the underlying mechanism.
Cold tolerance is linked to osmoregulatory function of the hindgut in Locusta migratoria
Summary: In insect cold tolerance, cold impairs rectal reabsorption whereas cold acclimation enhances water but not potassium reabsorption, highlighting the role of the hindgut in the preservation of extracellular homeostasis.
Biomechanical mechanisms underlying exosuit-induced improvements in walking economy after stroke
Summary: A soft robotic exosuit designed to assist the paretic limb during walking can induce more symmetrical body center of mass power generation by the paretic and non-paretic limbs and reduce metabolic power consumption during hemiparetic walking.
Malpighian tubules of Trichoplusia ni: recycling ions via gap junctions and switching between secretion and reabsorption of Na+ and K+ in the distal ileac plexus
Summary: The distal ileac plexus of larval lepidopterans recycles ions using gap junctions, and switches between ion secretion and reabsorption in response to input from the upstream components of the tubule.
Size-dependent avoidance of a strong magnetic anomaly in Caribbean spiny lobsters
Summary: Lobsters avoid artificial dens below strong magnets, suggesting that magnetic anomalies might affect lobster orientation and movement.
The reluctant visitor: a terpenoid in toxic nectar can reduce olfactory learning and memory in Asian honey bees
Summary: Triptolide, the hypothesized toxic compound in nectar of the thunder god vine, can reduce bee memory of a rewarded odor.
The loss of hemoglobin and myoglobin does not minimize oxidative stress in Antarctic icefishes
Summary: The loss of iron-centered oxygen-binding proteins in Antarctic fishes does not correspond with an overall reduction in levels of oxidized macromolecules, antioxidants or rates of protein degradation.
2023 JEB Outstanding Paper Prize shortlist and winner
The JEB Editors are delighted to announce the shortlisted authors for the 2023 JEB Outstanding Paper Prize. Read the winning paper - Tiny spies: mosquito antennae are sensitive sensors for eavesdropping on frog calls - by Hoover Pantoja-Sanchez and Brian Leavell from Ximena Bernal's lab at Purdue University, USA.
JEB Science Communication Workshop for ECRs
If you’re an early-career researcher interested in science communication and are attending the SEB Annual Conference in Prague this summer, come a day early and join the JEB Editors at a sci comm workshop to learn the key writing skills needed to promote your research to a broad audience beyond your peers (1 July at 14.30-17.30). Places are limited to 24 attendees, and applicants should apply through the SEB registration page by 30 April 2024.
Bridging the gap between controlled conditions and natural habitats in understanding behaviour
Novel technologies enable behavioural experiments with non-model species, in naturalistic habitats and with underexplored behaviours. In their Commentary, Scholz and colleagues discuss how to obtain a deeper understanding of the natural ecology and lifestyle of study animals.
How a macrourid fish remains buoyant at depths it should be unable to reach
Fish with swimbladders should not be capable of descending below 7200m, but when Alan Jamieson and Todd Bond spotted a macrourid fish at 7259m, they knew they had seen something miraculous. Working with Imantes Priede, they reveal that the swimbladder of a 1 kg fish could hold 37.9 g of oxygen, sufficient to offset the weight of the fish's bones, and take 221-440 days to fill, which is plausible because it takes years for the fish to descend to such depths.
ECR Workshop on Positive Peer Review
Are you an ECR looking for tips on how to write concise, astute and useful manuscript reviews? If so, join the JEB Editors at a 2-hour JEB-sponsored Workshop on Positive Peer Review at the Canadian Society of Zoologists annual meeting in Moncton on 9 May 2024 at 13.00-15.00. There are 25 spaces for ECRs and selection is first come, first serve. To sign up, check the ECR Workshop box when you register for the CSZ meeting.