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Cover: Behavioral manipulation occurs when parasites adaptively control the behavior of their hosts in ways that increase parasite fitness. The host behavior becomes an extended phenotype of the parasite (see pp. 142−147). In the zombie ant system, we have snapshots of the interaction as the parasite, a fungus in this case, causes ants to lock their jaws onto leaf veins in forests. Here, a dead green tree ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) from Australia is clamped with the parasite, Ophiocordyceps, which is beginning to grow out from it to eventually reproduce. In this special issue, researchers review and opine on the neurophysiology of such control. Photo credit: David Hughes.Close Modal - PDF Icon PDF LinkTable of contents
In the field: an interview with Martha Muñoz
Martha Muñoz is an Assistant Professor at Yale University, investigating the evolutionary biology of anole lizards and lungless salamanders. In our new Conversation, she talks about her fieldwork in Indonesia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the Appalachian Mountains, including a death-defying dash to the top of a mountain through an approaching hurricane.
Graham Scott in conversation with Big Biology
Graham Scott talks to Big Biology about the oxygen cascade in mice living on mountaintops, extreme environments for such small organisms. In this JEB-sponsored episode, they discuss the concept of symmorphosis and the evolution of the oxygen cascade.
Trap-jaw ants coordinate tendon and exoskeleton for perfect mandible arc
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Trap-jaw ants run the risk of tearing themselves apart when they fire off their mandibles, but Greg Sutton & co have discovered that the ants simultaneously push and pull the mandibles using energy stored in a head tendon and their exoskeleton to drive the jaws in a perfect arc.
Hearing without a tympanic ear
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In their Review, Grace Capshaw, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard and Catherine Carr explore the mechanisms of hearing in extant atympanate vertebrates and the implications for the early evolution of tympanate hearing.
