Issues

Summary: Recent evidence shows animals use polarised light, as well as colour, to signal each other. This is a critical review of this new area in animal vision and ecology.

Summary: Animals classify stimuli to generate appropriate motor actions; aversive responses to a small object in Drosophila melanogaster are driven in part by processes that elicit signed saccades with distinct dynamics and trigger mechanisms.

Summary: Effects of food deprivation on three behavioural traits – risk taking, exploratory activity and solitariness – as well as the relationships between them, in juvenile sea bass.

Summary: Corn snake yolk contains all the nutrients required for embryonic development but embryonic exploitation of calcium from eggshells enriches hatchling calcium content and results in larger hatchlings.

Editors' Choice: Spittlebugs snorkel to breathe atmospheric O₂ while submerged in a foam of excreted xylem sap. The metabolic cost associated with sucking xylem sap from the plant is surprisingly low.

Summary: Although alanine and proline play a crucial role in osmoregulation under hyperosmotic stress in both freshwater and brackish water Theodoxus fluviatilis snails, they differ in their mechanisms of organic osmolyte accumulation and the importance of urea in the process of osmoregulation.

Summary: In Atlantic salmon fed a phosphorous-deficient diet, new bone is devoid of minerals. Bone formation and mineralization become uncoupled. Non-mineralized bone is functional and retains the capacity to mineralize.

Summary: The integration of distinct sensory modalities is essential for behavioural decision making. In C. elegans neuroligin organizes extrapharyngeal microcircuits to modulate the food trigger response.

Summary: Drosophila melanogaster selected for starvation resistance take longer to develop and exhibit development-specific changes in traits associated with the accumulation and conservation of energy stores.

Highlighted Article: Walking Drosophila melanogaster steer toward sounds to their front, but away from sounds to their rear. These behaviors are explained by a simple rule: flies steer away from the antenna with the larger vibration amplitude.

Highlighted Article: Thermal accommodation in salmon migrating upriver is achieved via thermal metabolic compensation.

Summary: Naked mole rats enter into a coma-like state upon reoxygenation following severe hypoxia but do not pay off an oxygen debt.

Summary: Lymnaea display higher-order learning, including configural learning, which is the ability to give new meaning to a stimulus as a result of experiencing stimuli simultaneously.

Summary: Hummingbirds flying through intense upward gusts experience pronounced downward pitching motions (i.e. nose dives). In response, they interrupt flapping, hold the wings dorsally, and angle and fan the tail.

Summary: A new conceptualization of the sense of exertional physical fatigue, a universal human trait the nature and the neurobiological origins of which are commonly described in the literature as an enigma.

Highlighted Article: A method to identify subsurface prey capture by stereotyped movement signatures of fish-eating killer whales recorded on bio-logging tags reveals sex differences in foraging behavior.

Highlighted Article: Bats base roost emergence decisions on the acoustic component of rainfall, indicating that noise can serve as an important informational cue in decision-making.

Summary: Fin-biting cichlids in Lake Malawi exhibit a lateralized preference for side of attack. Predatory fish aiming for prey that show escape behaviours may frequently present lateralized behaviour in predation.

Summary: Tarsal wrapping in harvestmen permits a secure foothold on smooth cylindrical objects despite the lack of adhesive foot pads.

Summary: Cold exposure in the thirteen-lined ground squirrel appears to be a primary regulator of white adipose tissue but brown adipose tissue may exhibit an endogenous circannual rhythm in terms of depot volume.

Summary: Bold crabs were more aggressive than shy crabs, and the differences in energy metabolism affected their performance in terms of personality traits and agonistic behaviour.

Summary: The deadly fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, responsible for worldwide amphibian declines, was found to increase skin permeability and alter the tight junction complex in Australian green tree frogs.

Summary: Microbial urease activity in the gut fluid and epithelia of elasmobranchs plays an important role in producing ammonia from urea for absorption in the digestive tract.