Issues

Summary: The 3Rs – Reduction, Replacement and Refinement – are embedded into the legislation and guidelines governing ethical rigour of animal use in experiments; we consider the advantages of adopting key aspects of the 3Rs into experimental biology.

Summary: Modification of a gene implicated in male reproductive behavior using genetic editing tools results in the impairment of courtship behavior in a vertebrate model.

Summary: Behavioral choice tests reveal that blue petrels can recognize their own egg over a conspecific egg using odor cues.

Highlighted Article: Putative cannabinoid receptors are present in a mollusc and mediate stressful stimuli that alter learning and memory formation.

Summary: A comparison of force profiles during walking and climbing across a range of body sizes in primates indicates that as body size increases, a greater functional differentiation of the limbs is exhibited.

Summary: The tendinopathic free Achilles tendon core experiences a rapid volume loss following the onset of repeated loading, which is followed by an exaggerated longitudinal strain response.

Summary: The kinematics, anatomy and power-amplification mechanism for trap-jaw ants in the genus Myrmoteras, one of four convergent ant lineages with spring-loaded mandibles, are described.

Editors' Choice: Aerial exposure and recent thermal history, paired with relief from high low-tide temperatures, are important factors modulating the capacity of limpets to deal with repeated thermal stress in an intertidal environment.

Summary: Periodic peripheral rewarming occurs when king penguins rest at night in a shallow seawater tank, probably reflecting perfusion changes required for the deposition of subcutaneous fat.

Summary: Arctic ground squirrels will rapidly entrain to the polar day, yet they are relatively insensitive to entrainment by abrupt light–dark transitions, which they generate naturally as a consequence of their semi-fossorial behavior.

Highlighted Article: The snake infrared system can accomplish a ‘brightness constancy’ computation reflecting temperature, much as the visual system compares the luminance of a figure and the background.

Summary: Titin force is differentially enhanced in skinned skeletal muscle fibres from control and titin-mutant mice.

Summary: Insights into hemoglobin gene regulation by chronic moderate hypoxia at different ontogenetic stages in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax).

Summary: Bicyclus anynana butterflies benefit from feeding solutions mimicking ripe and over-ripe fruit similarly in terms of fecundity. However, their survival depends on the interaction between ripening stage and polyphenol content.

Summary: Early effects of diet modify monoamine levels and the monoamine response to social signals in the brain of plains spadefoot toads, a species in which diet and body condition influence social preferences.

Summary: Electrosensory strategies of electric fish for unequivocal estimation of object distance and impedance indicate the use of static image parameters and motion-related cues.

Summary: Perception of stress in photoresponsive mammals exposed to short days is reduced, and although they secrete more stress hormones in the cold, their flexibility of energy metabolism is attenuated.

Summary: Improved glutathione recycling may result from passive regulation of glutathione reductase by naturally rising levels of glucose during freezing in the wood frog, Rana sylvatica.

Summary: Vacuolar H⁺-ATPase-rich and Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase-rich cells along the gastric caecum may play an important role in osmoregulation and uptake of nutrients.

Summary: Using XROMM to test how well joint anatomy predicts rib motion during breathing in crocodylians, our best living model for the earliest archosaurs.