Issues

Summary: This paper reviews the biological role of iron, copper, zinc and manganese, and the mechanisms underlying their regulation in fish. Knowledge gaps for future research are also discussed.

Summary: Loss of night negatively affects reproductive performance of adult zebra finches born and raised in normal day–night, with a more severe effect at the adult stage in animals that were born and raised in a constant light environment.

Highlighted Article: Dwarf gourami water shooting behaviour was examined in a series of experiments to test the function and constraints of their shooting ability and is shown to be analogous to archerfish shooting.

Summary: Decoupling of muscle and joint kinematics in kangaroo rat lateral gastrocnemius muscles allows for a longer period of shortening near optimal velocities, which enables the muscle to sustain maximal power generation during jumping.

Summary: Anatomical and behavioural quantification of visual acuity (spatial resolving power) in green swordtails indicates that acuity was anatomically identical in both sexes, but behaviourally higher in females, with implications for signalling.

Summary: In wild-caught threespine sticklebacks, the circadian clock controls locomotor activity in only a few individuals. Sticklebacks are mostly nocturnal, although interindividual variation exists.

Highlighted Article: Bees show cognitive specialization, with some individuals being consistently better learners than the others within a sensory modality but across task complexity.

Summary: Poison frog tadpoles innately recognize dragonfly larvae as dangerous using a combination of visual and olfactory cues.

Highlighted Article: Tuning muscle and spring properties enhanced elastic energy storage in the plantaris longus muscle of Cuban tree frogs.

Summary: The integrative phenotypes of lizards, including metabolic and thermally dependent physiological traits, vary between populations at different elevations, but converge in the novel oxygen environment of extreme high elevation.

Summary: Cellular stress phenomena in reciprocally transplanted land snail Helix lucorum at 0 and 1250 m altitudes underline phenotypic plasticity as a response to seasonal environmental changes in corresponding habitats.

Summary: The spinning task assay is not a viable replacement for the laminar flow assay for the evaluation of swim performance in fish.

Editor's Choice: Acclimation to a large daily temperature cycle does not lead to a broadening of the aerobic metabolic window in fish, suggesting that thermal performance curves for aerobic scope are more plastic in amplitude than in breadth.

Summary: Different species in the genus Oryzias exhibit a great diversity in their lateral line pattern that is not explained by their evolutionary relationships.