Issues

Summary: The recent completion of Drosophila connectomes has raised expectations of a mechanistic explanation of brain operation. However, the connectome is not enough, and many types of additional information are required for this task.

Summary: Amphibians rely on water for reproduction; however, very little is known on how amphibians find water bodies. Experiments in Allobates femoralis suggest that frogs use stagnant odor cues to find breeding pools.

Summary: Hyoid muscle contraction and lines of action vary within a swallow in infant pigs, highlighting the complexity of muscle function and neural control involved in this behavior.

Summary: The antioxidant system of a migratory songbird responds to exercise and diet manipulation, and these changes are tissue specific.

Summary: In addition to fiber type, fascicle length underlies the muscular power versus economy trade-off. Long locomotor muscle fascicles are associated with increases in both power production and cost of transport.

Summary: Restricting jumping during growth reduced jump performance but did not alter elastic energy storage capacity at adulthood in an avian model.

Summary: Mitochondria of Arctica islandica are robust against hypoxic events, but sensitive to reoxygenation, which may indicate adaptation to unpredictable oxygen fluctuations and their burrowing lifestyle.

Summary: Feeding induces increases in liver mitochondrial respiratory rates without compromising mitochondrial redox balance in Boa constrictor snakes.

Highlighted Article: California sea lions engage in task-specific active touch sensing with their whiskers to discriminate size and differentiate textures, indicating that their whiskers are truly an active sensory system.

Summary: Global sampling of comb jellies reveals distinct fatty acid compositions in cold versus deep habitats, suggesting that high hydrostatic pressure requires specialized adaptation of lipid membranes.

Summary: Lampreys that have recovered from having their spinal cords transected do not fully regain swimming abilities and are not able to swim as efficiently as non-transected lampreys.

Highlighted Article: An evolutionarily conserved set of proteins is essential for muscle atrophy in the Drosophila and Manduca insect models.

Highlighted article: Diet impacts thermal performance traits in a temperate marine teleost fish, opaleye (Girella nigricans). Generalist ectotherms that can choose their diet may be able to regulate their performance at different environmental temperatures.

Highlighted article: A hydrodynamic analysis based on the measured 3D kinematics of penguins during forward swimming shows that bending deformation of the wings can improve propulsion performance.

Summary: Sunfish are capable of activating muscle volumes for suction feeding that are on par with most fast-starts, explosive escape maneuvers known to completely activate the muscle.