Issues

Summary: Researchers use echolocating bats – with their adaptations for sound production and reception – as models for understanding how animals sense and communicate in noisy environments.

Summary: Steroid sulfatase activity hydrolyzes steroid sulfates back to an active form. Here we demonstrate steroid sulfatase is present in various tissues during embryonic development.

Summary: HOXA5 is a transcription factor broadly expressed in the respiratory system; Hoxa5 expression in the mesenchyme and phrenic motor neurons controls distinct aspects of respiratory development.

Summary: Both mechanical and visual cues contribute to gaze orientation during free walking in blowflies, and when visual cues are lacking, more weight is given to gravity.

Summary: Mouse ovaries respond directly to low glucose availability by increasing progesterone production; this may contribute to homeostatic processes that positively regulate blood glucose.

Summary: The key role in the automaticity of the ascidian heart is played by the outward K⁺ currents, Na⁺ currents, activated hyperpolarization current I_f, and a current of unknown nature I_X.

Summary: Maintenance of near-normothermic temperatures in peripheral tissues of king penguins when fasting in cold water suggests maintained perfusion, presumably to mobilize free fatty acids from subcutaneous adipose tissue.

Editors’ Choice: Extension of the traditional 2D four-bar linkage to a high-mobility, 3D four-bar linkage accurately predicts the motion of a mouth-opening mechanism in the skull of ray-finned fishes.

Summary: Dominant Norway lobsters profit from their rank in a social hierarchy by gaining increased access to burrows and by reducing activity outside the shelters as the hierarchy emerges.

Summary: Chicken embryos during the internal pipping phase (at a time when pulmonary ventilation initiates) are capable of responding to heat exposure by tachypnea.

Summary: The analysis of coherent movement in Drosophila is established as a suitable indicator of qualitative changes of the heart's beating characteristics, which improves the usefulness of Drosophila as model of cardiac diseases.

Summary: Free-ranging dogs are generally aversive towards making direct human contact for food. Interestingly, they show enhanced interactions with humans who provide them with positive social contact.

Highlighted Article: A new protocol to study aversive conditioning in harnessed ants exploiting the natural aggressive mandible opening response shows that ants are capable of aversive learning.

Summary: A comparative physiological and immunohistochemical examination of coordinated activity among squid chromatophores in the absence of neural control and serotonin inhibition.

Summary: We pinpoint the main skeletal muscles associated with the production of an elaborate gestural courtship display in a tropical bird, the golden-collared manakin.

Summary: Gravid female cichlids show altered urine release and behavioral responses during inter- and intra-sexual social interactions. Brain activation patterns in socially relevant regions reveal context-dependent patterns.

Summary: Sea otters represent a transitional stage of aquatic adaptation and use a specialized durophagous raptorial biting mode characterized by large gapes, large gape angles and lack of lateral gape occlusion.

Summary: Food availability significantly affects physiological, behavioural and ecological processes in triploid carp by altering the trade-off between metabolism and growth.

Summary: Gill ionocytes in Japanese seabass originate from undifferentiated cells in the filaments and expand their distribution to the lamellae during freshwater acclimation.

Summary: A temperature jump applied at the onset of ramp shortening enhanced force during the initial phase of force decline, indicating that cross-bridge force generation is both strain-sensitive and endothermic (absorbs heat).