Issues

Summary: At the extremes of environmental temperature, electrical excitability of the heart and other excitable tissues may set limits to temperature tolerance of fishes and other ectotherms.

Highlighted Article: A newly discovered organ in the swordfish head, consisting of an oil-producing gland connected to capillaries with oil-excreting pores in the skin, may reduce streamwise friction drag and increase swimming efficiency.

Summary: Oxygen consumption rate of the ghost shrimp Neotrypaea uncinata fluctuates with a period similar to that of the local semidiurnal tidal cycle.

Summary: Egg incubation may present an opportunity for sex ratio manipulation in birds.

Summary: Aspects of immunity can increase nearly 50% during digestion of a meal in snakes; thus, immune up-regulation may contribute to the energetic cost of digestion (specific dynamic action, SDA).

Summary: Consuming and digesting a meal affects oxidative physiology to a surprising degree, and animals that consume large or meat-based meals may be particularly susceptible to increases in oxidative damage.

Highlighted Article: When exposed to progressive hypoxia, bar-headed geese reared at altitude exhibit a reduced metabolism and modestly increased ventilatory response, and also initiated cardiac responses earlier than geese reared at low altitude.

Summary: Nest sanitation primes the adaptive immune response of adult birds, but not necessarily the immune response of their nestlings; adult constitutive immune response also decreases throughout nestling rearing.

Summary: Embryonic turtles preferentially regulate tissue pH in the absence of blood pH regulation during acid–base disturbances. This pattern of acid–base regulation has never been observed before in amniotes.

Summary: Following ventilatory inactivity during winter submergence, bullfrogs can match breathing to metabolism and increase ventilation during hypoxia, but have reduced responses to hypercarbia when acutely transitioned to a warm-terrestrial environment.

Highlighted Article: Flea beetles use a resilin-based structure as an elastic energy store for the catapult jumping mechanism.

Summary: In response to an environmentally relevant hypersaline event, juvenile school and gummy sharks both show signs of stress; however, the osmoregulatory and cellular effects are greater in gummy sharks.

Summary: Female mosquito flight tones elicit a novel, stereotypical, auditory behaviour from male mosquitoes, although the male hearing organ is actually tuned to the frequency difference between male and female flight tones.

Summary: Experiments using a biorobotic model of the suction feeding system of ray-finned fishes reveal that motor program speed and kinematic timing of key musculoskeletal components affect subambient pressure generation.

Summary: Nematodes that survive intracellular freezing have small, uniform ice spaces, whereas the ice spaces of poor survivors vary more, with large spaces that may cause cellular damage.

Highlighted Article: Longitudinal observations of respiration times and underwater activity level indicate that consideration of respiration timing, in addition to respiration rate, is critical for estimating metabolic rates of free-ranging cetaceans.