Issues

Summary: Accurately predicting daily changes in the environment is critical for health and survival. Mammals use surprisingly sophisticated sensory processing mechanisms to achieve this task.

Summary: Sensory flow is a ubiquitous principle for flight guidance, independent of the fundamentally different peripheral representation of flow across the senses of vision and echolocation.

Summary: Odor stimulation induces cAMP production in Drosophila melanogaster olfactory sensory neurons via a process requiring a functional odorant receptor complex.

Summary: The little skate exhibits decreasing mass-adjusted swimming metabolic rates with increasing speed, which are the lowest values among elasmobranchs. However, its cost of transport is one of the highest measured for fishes.

Highlighted Article: Ticks employ a suite of molecular and biochemical mechanisms to survive dehydration stress; strategies include limiting damage and maximizing recovery when conditions allow.

Summary: Feeding on blood is not only a dangerous task but also a costly activity. Rhodnius prolixus increases its metabolic rate 17-fold and its respiratory pattern changes during blood sucking.

Summary: Exposure to a strong magnetic pulse altered the orientation behavior of Caribbean spiny lobsters, a finding consistent with the hypothesis that lobsters have magnetoreceptors based on the magnetic mineral magnetite.

Highlighted Article: Joints give otherwise rigid coralline algae the flexibility needed to survive in the surf zone; the viscoelastic nature of joint tissue enhances this structural innovation.

Highlighted Article: By matching cell wall structures to components of a conceptual model, we successfully predict the performance of coralline algal joints, thereby connecting mechanism across scales from molecular architecture to organismal function.

Summary: Feathers of two species of Lepidothrix manakin produce iridescence on a pale-coloured background using an inverse opal-like matrix of air and keratin.

Summary: The mangrove rivulus is an amphibious fish that uses a modified C-start escape response motor pattern to drive its terrestrial tail-flip behavior.

Summary: Olfactory and non-sensory epithelia in the nose tend to be located in the path of olfactory and respiratory airflow, respectively. Some ethmoturbinals are shown to function in respiration in short-snouted felids.

Highlighted Article: Red-eyed treefrog embryos rapidly release hatching enzyme from localized gland cells, then behaviorally exit their capsule in seconds to escape predator attacks. This represents a novel hatching mechanism in frogs.

Summary: Models of light propagation in water and visual mechanisms show how changes in depth and distance alter visible spectra, and predict the consequences for fish colour vision and colour signals.

Summary: Respirometry reveals that higher environmental temperatures reduce the metabolic costs of digestion but hasten starvation, and behavioral measurements show that tsetse flies switch between thermal optima throughout feeding cycles.

Summary:The digestive system and gut microbiota of lizards are highly responsive to diet, and thus intrinsic physiological limitations may not limit the evolution of herbivory in lizards.

Summary: Longitudinal investigation of acoustic allometry in domestic piglets indicates that grunt formant frequencies allow conspecifics to assess a signaler's body size.

Summary: Coho salmon do not conform to existing predictions about the temperature dependence of aerobic scope in Pacific salmon.