Issues

Summary: By keeping an animal on top of an obstacle-laden sphere, a ‘terrain treadmill’ enables high-resolution observation of locomotion through obstacles as large as animals over a long time and distance.

Summary: Patterns of thermoregulation at air temperatures approaching or exceeding body temperature in a passerine bird are similar when using a stepped series of progressively increasing air temperatures or continuous exposure for several hours to each air temperature setpoint.

Summary: Design of a versatile visual stimulation device for presenting moving patterns of polarised light, and demonstration of its use to characterise polarisation sensitivity in butterfly photoreceptors and blowfly motion-sensitive interneurons.

Summary: The bee parasite Nosema ceranae reduces olfactory learning in bumblebees. This sublethal effect can compromise colony foraging success and chemical communication between bees, ultimately leading to colony collapse.

Highlighted Article: Substantial reduction of metabolic functions rather than thermal compensation is the response of corals to strong seasonal temperature reductions.

Summary: Tolerance of naturally acidic, dilute and soft water by larvae of the frog Limnodynastes terraereginae involves adaptations to the branchial calcium transport pathway, which protect intercellular junctions against damage.

Highlighted Article: Unpredictable cold spells require African striped mice to maintain high heat production capacity throughout the year, achieved through nuanced trade-offs between organ size and metabolic activity.

Highlighted Article: The in situ feeding performance of Chromis viridis indicates that the population resides close to a local performance peak.

Summary: Low food availability, but not infection, negatively affects mitochondrial function and flight performance in monarch butterflies, with potential implications for migration, fitness and population dynamics.

Summary: Although pulmonary blood pressure and systemic blood pressure are the same in the Madagascar ground boa because of the lack of intraventricular pressure separation, aorta and pulmonary artery vessel walls have different morphologies.

Summary: Castes and subcastes of Camponotus fellah ants are clearly distinguished in form characteristics and body size. Despite these morphometric variations, all ants, including males, show the same general walking characteristics.

Summary: Mid-piece fragments of tadpole larvae of the ascidian Ciona, lacking most of the anterior trunk and posterior tail, autonomously and periodically express tail-beating bursts.

Summary: The biosynthesis and emission of a key Drosophila pheromone are differentially affected by ageing, social context, and early exposure to this pheromone and to microbes.

Highlighted Article: During hypoxia, toadfish experience lower plasma serotonin concentrations and a corresponding increase in gill serotonin uptake and degradation, suggesting that the gill regulates circulating serotonin during hypoxia.