Issues

Summary: Rapid cold hardening allows ectotherms to quickly enhance their cold tolerance. Here, we review the ecological relevance, underlying mechanisms and future research directions for this important process.

Summary: Dental microwear texture analysis shows the size of abrasives in the herbivore diet has a greater influence on dental microwear than their concentration, with different sizes creating opposing effects in terms of surface roughness.

Summary: Cross-striated muscle fibers of squid tentacles generate explosive elongation for prey capture through excitation by sodium-based action potentials; the slower obliquely striated arm muscle fibers do not produce action potentials or elongation.

Highlighted Article: Detailed movement patterns and complex electrosensory scenes of three species of weakly electric fish were tracked without tagging using a submerged electrode array in a small neotropical stream.

Summary: Aerodynamic lift from gliding hawk and owl tails, revealed by tracking helium bubbles, is inconsistent with passive stability or minimizing induced drag, but indicates a role in reducing viscous drag.

Summary: Queen and brood exert additive and synergistic effects on worker reproduction, behavior and gene expression in bumble bees.

Summary: Exogenous manipulation of the dopaminergic system to test for effects on personality traits in the common waxbill (Estrilda astrild) reveals behavioural differences, some of which are context specific.

Summary: Male house mice demonstrating high competitive ability possess several musculoskeletal traits hypothesized to improve fighting performance in male–male contests.

Summary: Food quality has a time-dependent impact on the offspring of male seahorses, revealing new insights into male pregnancy and its potential adaptive importance for syngnathid offspring.

Summary: Toads, unlike mammals, prioritize non-visual information to coordinate landing preparation.

Summary: Induction of vitellogenesis in two edible crabs by administration of arachidonic acid and prostaglandins provides useful information on fecundity for the aquaculture of these species.

Summary: In an investigation of its role in the heat shock response of an intertidal copepod, HSF-1 affected a complex gene suite both in response to and independent of heat stress.

Summary: Selective labelling of the cockroach's antennal lobe output neurons shows that odour responses are stimulus specific and concentration dependent, and preserve information on the spatial structure of the stimulus.

Summary: Elevated baseline corticosterone levels induced by water restriction may have critical consequences on several major life-history traits such as energy budget, mobility and potential responses to predators.

Summary: Deep-diving Risso's dolphins use multiple biosonar adjustment strategies to balance inspection of complex multi-target environments with more gradual adjustment necessary to capture evasive prey.

Editors' Choice: Outdoor experiments with ants on a trackball and agent-based modelling suggest that navigating ants might continuously integrate attractive and repellent visual memories.

Summary: Scale effect rather than morphological differences explain the variability in load-carrying performance in different-sized individuals in the polymorphic ant species Messor barbarus.

Summary: Eyes of chestnut tiger butterflies have UV-, blue- and green-sensitive cells and they are also polarization sensitive, which may be useful for visual orientation during migration.

Summary: Noxious thermal and mechanical stimuli evoke strike behavior in Manduca sexta and both stimuli activate individual nociceptive sensory neurons in the body wall.

Summary: An enforced daily feeding schedule in the long term could serve as a conditioning environment that shapes overall hypothalamic regulation, liver and gonadal functions in diurnal vertebrates at the genetic levels.

Summary: Sex-specific changes in the gut microbiome are associated with aggression during the non-breeding season in Siberian hamsters, suggesting a potential role for the microbiome in regulating seasonal aggression.