Issues

Summary: A review of OxymiRs – oxygen-responsive microRNAs – in over 20 animal species, from squid to humans, reveals a lack of a universal microRNA strategy; instead, there are species-specific responses to oxygen deprivation.

Summary: An accurate method for measuring the time-resolved aerodynamic power generated during free flight using direct force measurements from an aerodynamic force platform and the measured 3D wing velocity.

Summary: A fast and efficient method to dissect myxospores in a few steps, involving sonication and sucrose and Percoll density gradient ultracentrifugation.

Highlighted Article: In vitro-VR: a method enabling an in vitro muscle to ‘remotely control’ a musculoskeletal limb simulation via a closed-loop hardware–software interface.

Summary: In fly flight, self-motion can give rise to a visual motion illusion, driven by perceptual aliasing. Robust object tracking on illusory panoramas supports parallel visual motion processing in flight.

Summary: The response to an immune challenge in a viviparous reptile is metabolically costly and altered during pregnancy. Activation of the immune system during pregnancy may negatively impact offspring.

Summary: Data from acoustic modelling and tagged pilot whale pairs show that pilot whale calls have the potential to reach spatially dispersed group members.

Highlighted Article: Chronic or repeated subcritical forces weaken and fracture mussel shells. The scale of this mechanical fatigue provides ecological insight into the forces that can break mussel shells.

Summary: The gross morphology and position of the eye in a freshwater fish differs among populations according to light availability and the complexity of the habitat.

Summary: Female Swiss mice enhance their lactation performance in line with a graded dietary fat content from 8.3 to 41.7% fat, but not at higher fat levels.

Editors' Choice: Empirical evidence that the ability to dissipate body heat constrains offspring feeding behaviour in a breeding bird, the tree swallow.

Summary: Scales regenerated on fish that were maintained at high temperatures exhibited a substantial mineralized layer and mechanical behavior more akin to the ontogenetic scales than scales regenerated at a lower temperature.

Summary: Female pygmy gouramis produce sounds during agonistic interactions similar to males despite having smaller sonic organs. This supports the hypothesis that both sexes signal acoustically during contests in vocal fish species.

Highlighted Article: Description of a new measurement method and its successful application to deep-diving elephant seals, showing that these predators attempt to catch mesopelagic prey that react with bright anti-predator flashes.

Summary: The performance of bumble bees varies broadly when trained to bimodal stimuli and the components within a bimodal stimulus are not used equivalently.

Summary: A magnetic pulse alters the orientation of Pacific salmon, suggesting that the magnetic sense of fish might depend on particles of magnetite.

Summary: Ciliary movement in the pharynx of marine filter feeding ascidians is arrested by mechanical stimuli on other body parts. This ciliary arrest is mediated by an α7-like cholinergic receptor.

Summary: The vertically shortest wide-field stimulus that causes an optomotor response in the cockroach is about 1 deg high, corresponding to one or just a few rows of ommatidia.