Issues

Summary: Various factors affect our ability to accurately determine lung capacity during diving in air-breathing marine vertebrates; improving our estimates has implications for our understanding of the physiology and ecophysiology of these animals.

Summary: In squid, exposure to water-borne environmental estrogens during development and throughout the juvenile period alters sensory processing and impairs appropriate behavioral responses to injury.

Summary: The discovery of extraordinarily high rates of net oxalate secretion by the teleost gut support its proposed role as the main pathway for eliminating this potentially toxic waste metabolite.

Summary: A simple device that can reversibly immobilize ciliates for observation and manipulation.

Summary: Walking with added mass altered the force demand under which human legs normally operate, which highlights the versatility of human feet.

Editors' Choice: Drift-feeding rainbow trout choose between swimming and refuging depending on the cost and success rate of prey capture across flow velocities.

Summary: The long-legged bat (Macrophyllum macrophyllum) emits broader and more intense echolocation calls than its close relatives, but these are still less intense and have less flexibility in the emitted beam than ecologically similar vespertilionid bats.

Highlighted Article: Northern pygmy mice produce an elaborate song through laryngeal whistling supported by a large air sac located inside the larynx, providing novel insight into the anatomical and physiological basis of signal elaboration.

Summary: The presence of vaterite alters fish behaviour in ways that are likely to decrease survival.

Highlighted Article: Heat-induced heart failure in rainbow trout is due to atrio-ventricular block, an outcome from the opposite effects of temperature on depolarizing sodium (source) current and repolarizing potassium (sink) current of ventricular myocytes.

Summary: Dark-eyed juncos maintain normothermia in the cold by modifying separate physiological traits at different time points in response to external temperature cues.

Summary: The exchange of sensory signals shapes future behavior of juvenile crayfish in response to threat signals and during intraspecific agonistic encounters.

Summary: The quantity of vitellogenin yolk protein in female plasma is associated with oxidative state and not reproductive investment, providing a potential shield from free radicals during reproduction of egg-producing species.

Summary: Fibroblasts from small breed dogs and from both small and large breed dogs treated with oleic acid to decrease membrane saturation have lower maximal and basal oxygen consumption rates, respectively – traits associated with longer lifespans.

Summary: Gene expression differences between honey bee male (specialist) and female (generalist) antennae identify differences in molecular specialization and reveal new genes involved in odorant detection.

Summary: Non-migrating butterflies keep directed courses when viewing a simulated sun or panoramic scene. This suggests that they orient based on multiple visual cues independent of their migratory context.

Highlighted Article: We report the first evolutionary loss of mixed melanin-based animal pigmentation, showing absence of pheomelanin in parrot feathers. This is likely driven by color redundancy with psittacofulvins, exclusive parrot pigments.

Highlighted Article: Zebra finches modify their metabolic, hygric and thermal response to environmental conditions during heatwaves to achieve more favourable heat and water balance, maintain body mass and avoid physiological stress.

Summary: The stability of supercomplexes of mitochondrial electron transport chain complexes I and III varies among vertebrates and is greatest in poikilothermic reptiles and weakest in endotherms.

Summary: Painted turtles show differences in immune function across age, sex and sampling date, with some evidence of a trade-off between reproductive effort and immune function with age.

Summary: Maximum and basal metabolic rate and their oxygen, temperature and size dependencies are mechanistically and quantifiably linked via the physiological capacity to supply oxygen.

Highlighted Article: The relationship between energy use during flight and host colonisation in the mountain pine beetle suggests potential selection mechanisms maintaining flight polyphenisms.

Summary: Leopard iguanas bite during prey capture, defense, sexual competition and copulation. Experimental data show they would maintain or improve bite performance at the higher temperatures projected in climate-change scenarios.

Summary: Free-ranging callitrichine primates adjust aspects of asymmetrical gait kinematics to promote stability when moving over arboreal substrates varying in diameter and orientation angle.

Summary: Intrinsic heart rate resetting occurs inconsistently with temperature acclimation in rainbow trout; however, it can occur rapidly, within 1 h of warming, without changes in mRNA expression of sinoatrial node proteins.