Issues
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Cover image
Cover Image
Cover: During their annual molt, king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) replace their entire plumage within a short period, while fasting ashore. The enormous physiological changes associated with this period might challenge their ability to swim to distant food sources and forage efficiently at great depth. Enstipp et al. (jeb208900) used subcutaneously implanted bio-loggers to record pressure and peripheral temperature in immature king penguins across two molt cycles. They found that dive performance was significantly reduced after the molt, while the temperature recordings suggest that heat loss was increased, adding to the energetic challenges penguins face during this annual event. Photo credit: Manfred Enstipp.
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INSIDE JEB
CONVERSATION
REVIEW
Expanding our horizons: central pattern generation in the context of complex activity sequences
Summary: Central pattern generation is a concept conventionally applied to neural control of simple, innate rhythmic movements. Here, I discuss how it can be applied to the control of complex, non-rhythmic, learned stereotypical activity sequences.
SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
Amphibious fish ‘get a jump’ on terrestrial locomotor performance after exercise training on land
Summary: Terrestrial exercise training improves the locomotor performance of amphibious fishes on land as a result of skeletal muscle remodeling, which may enhance foraging ability, predator avoidance and dispersal overland.
Nitrogen inaccessibility protects spider silk from bacterial growth
Summary: Resistance of spider silk to bacterial degradation is likely due to bacteriostatic rather than antibacterial mechanisms as nitrogen is made inaccessible.
Differential construction response to humidity by related species of mound-building termites
Summary: Two mound-building termite species occupying the same locale are morphologically and behaviourally similar but create different macro-scale structures, and demonstrate this differential building behaviour under low-humidity conditions.
Exosome-like vesicles in Apis mellifera bee pollen, honey and royal jelly contribute to their antibacterial and pro-regenerative activity
Summary: Apis mellifera honeybee hypopharyngeal gland secretions contain exosome-like vesicles, which contribute to their antibacterial and pro-regenerative activity.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Conjugate eye movements guide jumping locomotion in an avian species
Summary: During jumping locomotion, female peafowl rarely gaze at their landing spots and their eye movements are highly conjugate while shifting forward, suggesting that vision plays a critical role in locomotion that varies depending on the locomotor task.
Scaling of swimming performance in baleen whales
Editors' Choice: Motion-sensing tags attached to baleen whales paired with unoccupied aerial system (drone) imagery demonstrate that while oscillatory stroking frequency decreases with size, absolute swimming speed remains consistent over an order of magnitude body mass range.
Effect of chronic stress on cardiovascular and ventilatory responses activated by both chemoreflex and baroreflex in rats
Summary: Our results provide evidence that autonomic changes may reflect important mechanisms in the etiology of cardiovascular diseases associated with exposure to chronic stress.
Lower extremity joints and muscle groups in the human locomotor system alter mechanical functions to meet task demand
Summary: Joints and muscle groups in the human locomotor system alter their mechanical function to meet demands of the locomotor task being performed.
Stress coping and evolution of aerobic exercise performance: corticosterone levels in voles from a selection experiment
Summary: The aerobic exercise performance of bank voles during a swimming trial is suppressed by the glucocorticoid stress response, but artificial selection for high performance does not modify the blood corticosterone level.
Size-selective filtration of the atrial wall estimated from the accumulation of tracers in the kidney of the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis
Summary: Magnetic resonance imaging showed accumulation of the injected tracers in the kidney. The atrial wall of the Mytilus galloprovincialis could filtrate small molecules (<0.5 kDa), but not larger molecules.
Food mobility and the evolution of grasping behaviour: a case study in strepsirrhine primates
Summary: The frequency of hand grasping across 17 strepsirrhine species increases with a swinging motion of the food, clarifying the role of food mobility in the evolution of grasping hands in primates.
The dive performance of immature king penguins following their annual molt suggests physiological constraints
Highlighted Article: Dive and foraging performance of immature king penguins was significantly decreased after their annual molt fast ashore, suggesting physiological constraints.
Selection for reproduction under short photoperiods changes diapause-associated traits and induces widespread genomic divergence
Highlighted Article: Quasinatural selection for reproduction under short photoperiods affects traits associated with reproductive diapause without altering the circadian rhythm, and induces divergence of SNPs associated with genes and pathways involved in diapause.
Wings as inertial appendages: how bats recover from aerial stumbles
Highlighted Article: Bats rapidly recover from substantial disturbances to body orientation within one wingbeat, relying primarily upon inertial torques generated from left–right asymmetry in wingbeat kinematics.
Specialized landing maneuvers in Spix's disk-winged bats (Thyroptera tricolor) reveal linkage between roosting ecology and landing biomechanics
Highlighted Article: Bats with suction cups on their wrists and feet perform specialized maneuvers to land in specialized roosts, furled leaf tubes, suggesting linkage between roosting ecology and landing mechanics in bats.
Experimental evidence that symbiotic bacteria produce chemical cues in a songbird
Summary: Experimental evidence shows that chemical cues relevant to reproductive behaviour in a songbird, the dark-eyed junco, are produced by bacteria associated with uropygial gland secretions.
Effects of monoamine manipulations on the personality and gene expression of three-spined sticklebacks
Summary: Serotonergic and dopaminergic gene expression causally explains aspects of stickleback personality. Human pharmaceuticals make sticklebacks bolder, demonstrating consequences of human medical waste for wildlife.
High-speed locomotion in the Saharan silver ant, Cataglyphis bombycina
Highlighted Article: The Saharan silver ant performs high-speed locomotion with a characteristic high stride frequency, achieved by a combination of short stance phases and fast leg swing movements.
Sonar strobe groups and buzzes are produced before powered flight is achieved in the juvenile big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus
Highlighted Article: Most bats both fly and echolocate; big brown bat pups attain adult-like echolocation behaviours before adult-like flight behaviours.
Oxidative status and telomere length are related to somatic and physiological maturation in chicks of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)
Summary: Physiological maturation in birds, prior to fledging may occur at the expense of telomere length when growth occurs under sub-optimal environmental conditions.
Divergent mechanisms for regulating growth and development after imaginal disc damage in the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta
Highlighted Article: Manduca sexta is proposed as a new model to study the effects of imaginal disc damage on developmental timing. After disc damage, critical weight is altered although growth rate is not, and juvenile hormone appears uncoupled from critical mass.
In the field: an interview with Martha Muñoz

Martha Muñoz is an Assistant Professor at Yale University, investigating the evolutionary biology of anole lizards and lungless salamanders. In our new Conversation, she talks about her fieldwork in Indonesia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the Appalachian Mountains, including a death-defying dash to the top of a mountain through an approaching hurricane.
Graham Scott in conversation with Big Biology

Graham Scott talks to Big Biology about the oxygen cascade in mice living on mountaintops, extreme environments for such small organisms. In this JEB-sponsored episode, they discuss the concept of symmorphosis and the evolution of the oxygen cascade.
Trap-jaw ants coordinate tendon and exoskeleton for perfect mandible arc
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Trap-jaw ants run the risk of tearing themselves apart when they fire off their mandibles, but Greg Sutton & co have discovered that the ants simultaneously push and pull the mandibles using energy stored in a head tendon and their exoskeleton to drive the jaws in a perfect arc.
Hearing without a tympanic ear
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In their Review, Grace Capshaw, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard and Catherine Carr explore the mechanisms of hearing in extant atympanate vertebrates and the implications for the early evolution of tympanate hearing.