Issues
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Cover image
Cover Image
Cover: The tegu lizard Salvator merianae exhibits a pronounced seasonal activity cycle, actively foraging during summer (cover image) but hibernating during winter, regardless of the ambient temperature. Zena, Dantonio et al. (pp. 725-733) utilized this independence of seasonal activity/inactivity states from temperature to determine the relative effects of temperature versus metabolic state on baroreflex control in spring/summer- and winter-acclimated lizards. Baroreflex sensitivity was acclimation-state independent. The lower resting heart rate in winter-acclimated tegus reflected higher vagal tone. Heart rate responded to hypotension rather than to hypertension, independent of acclimation state. Photo credit: L. A. Zena.
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INSIDE JEB
OUTSIDE JEB
COMMENTARY
Does the physiology of chondrichthyan fishes constrain their distribution in the deep sea?
Summary: Chondrichthyan fishes (sharks, rays and chimaeras) are exceedingly rare or possibly absent at abyssal depths (>4000 m), unlike bony fishes. This Commentary discusses hypotheses implicating the unusual physiology of chondrichthyans as an explanation for their scarcity at great depths.
SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
Activity dependence of spreading depression in the locust CNS
Summary: Locust spreading depression is strongly dependent on existing levels of neural activity. Increased neural activity heightens susceptibility to spreading depression, whereas a reduction in activity is inhibitory.
Repeatability of metabolic rate is lower for animals living under field versus laboratory conditions
Summary: Individual metabolic rates are generally repeatable, but repeatability not only declines with time interval between measurements but is also lower for animals living under field versus more stable laboratory conditions.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Increased muscular volume and cuticular specialisations enhance jump velocity in solitarious compared with gregarious desert locusts, Schistocerca gregaria
Highlighted Article: Larger muscles and more elastic cuticular springs allow solitarious locusts to jump 25% faster than gregarious locusts, but they require double the energy and time to operate the spring mechanism.
Sex-specific nutrient use and preferential allocation of resources to a sexually selected trait in Hyalella amphipods
Summary: Age influences sexual dimorphism in carbon and phosphorus acquisition and assimilation, a pattern potentially driven by the exaggeration of male sexual traits to which resources are preferentially allocated.
Water deprivation increases maternal corticosterone levels and enhances offspring growth in the snake Vipera aspis
Summary: Water deprivation induces an increase in baseline corticosterone level in pregnant aspic vipers, which may subsequently influence offspring growth.
Collective selection of food patches in Drosophila
Summary: Fruit flies make collective foraging decisions, the dynamics and magnitude of which vary with group size and composition.
Exceptional running and turning performance in a mite
Highlighted Article: The mite Paratarsotomus macropalpis attains the highest relative speed and stride frequency documented for any animal.
The importance of thermal history: costs and benefits of heat exposure in a tropical, rocky shore oyster
Summary: Thermal responses and organismal vulnerability to climate largely depend on the proximate thermal history of individuals as exposure to acute heat events can enhance survival and thermal performance.
Measuring abnormal movements in free-swimming fish with accelerometers: implications for quantifying tag and parasite load
Summary: Accelerometer data from rotational movement associated with tag load and irritation in cod indicates a more careful interpretation of data derived from external tags is required.
Reconfiguration of the immune system network during food limitation in the caterpillar Manduca sexta
Summary: Food shortage causes complex changes to the immune system, not a simple decline. Specifically, it induces immune system reconfiguration, leading to increases in some immune functions and decreases in others.
Evidence for a plasma-accessible carbonic anhydrase in the lumen of salmon heart that may enhance oxygen delivery to the myocardium
Highlighted Article: Results from research in coho salmon support the presence of an enhanced oxygen delivery system in the salmonid heart, which could help support cardiac function when oxygen supply to this vital organ becomes limiting.
Winter metabolic depression does not change arterial baroreflex control of heart rate in the tegu lizard Salvator merianae
Summary: Winter acclimation is compatible with lower resting heart rate but unchanged baroreflex sensitivity in the lizard Salvator merianae; independent of acclimation, heart rate responds more to hypotension than to hypertension.
Glucose metabolism ontogenesis in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in the light of the recently sequenced genome: new tools for intermediary metabolism programming
Summary: The g6pcb2.a gluconeogenic gene is atypically up-regulated by dietary carbohydrate as soon as first feeding in rainbow trout and thus may contribute to the glucose-intolerant phenotype in early in life.
Private information alone can trigger trapping of ant colonies in local feeding optima
Summary: Route memories alone can trigger ‘trapping’ of ant colonies in suboptimal exploitation of established but poorer-quality food sources, even when pheromone trails are removed.
Surface tension dominates insect flight on fluid interfaces
Highlighted Article: The first biomechanical model of insect flight on air–water fluid interfaces, in the context of observations on waterlily beetles, uncovers a complex interplay of aerodynamics, biomechanics and capillary forces.
CORRECTION
Meet the JEB Editors @ SEB 2023
Come and meet the JEB team at the Society for Experimental Biology centenary conference from 4-7 July in Edinburgh, UK. Visit exhibition stand 13/15 to pick up JEB centenary goodies, including our new ‘100 years of discovery’ T shirt, and join our Meet the JEB Editors event on Thursday 6 July at 12.30 at Platform 5 to find out more about the journal and chat to Editors including EiC Craig Franklin, Monitoring Editors Sanjay Sane, Trish Schulte and John Terblanche and the in-house News and Reviews team.
New funding schemes for junior faculty staff
In celebration of our 100th anniversary, JEB has launched two new grants to support junior faculty staff working in animal comparative physiology and biomechanics who are within five years of setting up their first lab/research group. Check out our ECR Visiting Fellowships and Research Partnership Kickstart Travel Grants. First deadline for applications is 15 July 2023.
JEB@100: an interview with Monitoring Editor Katie Gilmour
Katie Gilmour tells us how she first encountered the JEB Editorial team as a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, UK, and how she would like to have a Star Trek tricorder to monitor fish non-invasively in the field.
The Forest of Biologists
The Forest of Biologists is a biodiversity initiative created by The Company of Biologists, with support from the Woodland Trust. For every Research and Review article published in Journal of Experimental Biology a native tree is planted in a UK forest. In addition to this we are protecting and restoring ancient woodland and are dedicating these trees to our peer reviewers. Visit our virtual forest to learn more.
Centenary Review - Adaptive echolocation behavior
Cynthia F. Moss and colleagues Review the behaviours used by echolocating mammals to track and intercept moving prey, interrogate dynamic sonar scenes, and exploit visual and passive acoustic stimuli.
Crucial DNA at crux of insect wing size evolution
Keity Farfán-Pira and colleagues have revealed that a tiny region of regulatory DNA in the vestigial gene governs whether insect wings are large or small and has played a key role in the evolution of insect wing size.
