Issues

Highlighted Article: Associative memories of noxious experiences can become detrimental if overly generalized; fruit fly aversive memories lose their specificity over time, mimicking the situation in rodents and humans.

Highlighted Article: While antennae are usually considered the main volatile sensors in insects, we show that the ovipositor is also an efficient sensor for plant volatiles and carbon dioxide and performs olfaction.

Summary: Socially dominant birds thermoregulate more precisely than subordinates, maintaining wider thermal safety margins. Higher vulnerability of subordinates to heat stress could have implications for social-group dynamics under climate change.

Summary: Catch-up growth within the motherly brood pouch of terrestrial crustaceans may be an important evolutionary innovation for life in changing atmospheric oxygen conditions.

Summary: The flatworm Macrostomum pusillum is capable of self-fertilization, and its sexual biology suggests that this is a frequent or even the exclusive reproductive mode in this species.

Summary: The nocturnal bull ant, Myrmecia midas, uses multiple cues to navigate and appears to rely heavily on landmark information for navigation.

Summary: Examination of how visual acuity in ray-finned fishes correlates with morphological and ecological factors shows that both eye size and habitat type are strong predictors of acuity in this group.

Summary: Worker honey bees use physical cues to detect their colony's size, and thus developmental state, before building special cells of reproductive comb.

Summary: Mirids propel jumps either by direct contractions of leg muscles without the use of catapult mechanisms or by the combined movements of the legs and wings.

Summary: Analysis of the alternating tripod gait of desert ants together with ground reaction forces and weight-specific leg impulses during inclined locomotion reveals the mechanical function of the hind legs as the main brake on downslopes (–60 and –30 deg) and the front legs as the main motor on steep upslopes (+60 deg).

Summary: Demonstration of the reliability of an acoustic method to extract and analyse the cardiac function of free-ranging southern elephant seals in order to study post-dive recovery.

Summary: Marked regional differences in mechanical properties of the Achilles tendon may allow the proximal portion to function as a mechanical buffer to protect the stiffer, more highly stressed, distal portion from injury.

Summary: Hill-type muscle models, driven by EMG and ultrasound-based measures of fascicle behaviour, predict 40–80% of gastrocnemius forces, as confirmed via ultrasound-based estimates of tendon strains.

Highlighted Article: When two-legged hopping is used as a model to determine the relationship between metabolic cost and muscle mechanics, muscle impulse (time integral of muscle force) characterizes the energetic cost per hop best.

Summary: Electroreceptive afferents of pulse-type gymnotiform electric fish are highly sensitive to phase-frequency distortion of the EOD waveform, implying that the accepted dichotomy between the amplitude- and time-coding systems requires revision.

Summary: Mitochondrial oxygen consumption of cardiac permeabilized fibers decreases rapidly after acute warming and then remains stable during the subsequent warm acclimation process in rainbow trout.

Summary: Daytime light intensity affects physiological and behavioural functions of not only diurnal but also nocturnal small mammals.

Summary: Transient exogenous cortisol administration to brown trout causes an increase in glutathione in the short term, but this increase is not maintained in the long term; overwinter survival is associated with low levels of oxidative stress and glutathione.

Summary: UV-sensitive photoreceptors are more strongly polarization sensitive than green photoreceptors in honeybee ocelli; preferred e-vector orientation varies across the visual field with a preference for vertically polarized light along the equator.

Summary: Hyperthermal stress of the sea anemone Aiptasia pallida results in rapid symbiont loss that precedes a shift in signaling sphingolipids towards cell death after prolonged exposure.

Summary: Two closely related ant species inhabiting contrasting environments show key differences in heat-shock response strategy and subsequent physiological adaptations.

Summary: A novel approach integrating inverse dynamics and numerical fluid flow simulation reveals that humans modulate upper limb joint work in water just as they do at the lower limb on land.

Summary: Leatherback turtles feed on salty jellyfish to accumulate blubber that fuels reproduction. They eat 80% of their body mass per day and secrete 6–9 l of tears per hour to remove salt.