Issues

Summary: This Review describes the biophysical, physiological and behavioural solutions that allow small insects to determine the direction of a sound source in space, even under complex field conditions.

Summary: On a low-carbohydrate diet, flies experience a reduction in glycogen stores yet increase flight activity without changing rates of glycogen depletion.

Summary: To approach moving obstacles, honeybees reduce speeds in still air but increase speeds in wind. To transit obstacles, bees reduce speeds in still air but alter flight paths in wind.

Highlighted Article: The stepping patterns of Manduca sexta (caterpillars) vary with substrate and orientation, indicating that they can detect and respond to the mechanical properties of the environment with which they interact.

Summary: The presence of a swim bladder enhances lagenar sensitivity to sound pressure and higher frequencies in female plainfin midshipman, which may be adaptive for the detection of behaviorally relevant social signals.

Summary: Aerobic metabolism of an ecologically dominant estuarine fish is influenced by acclimation to environmental changes without altering trait repeatability. Furthermore, specific metabolic traits are phenotypically correlated.

Highlighted Article: The first 3-D kinematics of the knuckle-walking chimpanzee hand illustrates unique characteristics as well as shared commonalities with digitigrade and palmigrade walking of macaques.

Summary: Reduced lactate dehydrogenase activity in the heart and lower circulating sex hormones are linked to female-biased mortality during thermal stress in Pacific salmon.

Summary: Social stability is vital for group productivity and long-term persistence. Here, both behavioral and physiological evidence conveys that larger groups are less susceptible to social disturbance.

Highlighted Article: The ultra-fast cheliceral strike of mecysmaucheniid spiders, the fastest documented movement among arachnids, is achieved via shifts in the shape of external structures and shifts in muscle anatomy towards increased specialization.

Summary: Three-toed sloths minimize activation of their limb muscles while hanging and appear to offset the cost of force production when walking and climbing by preferentially recruiting large, slow-contracting muscle fibers.

Highlighted Article: Jewel beetles have an irregular retinal mosaic of randomly rotated and mirror-symmetric ommatidia, housing at least four spectral classes of photoreceptors.

Summary: An incompressible physical gas gill, stabilized by relatively long and thick setae, is present in terrestrial caterpillars of Malacosoma castrensis, which can survive many hours underwater.

Summary: Mantis shrimp use path integration, an error-prone navigational strategy, when traveling home. When path integration fails, mantis shrimp employ a stereotyped yet flexible search pattern to locate their homes.

Summary: Exposure of zebrafish to acute or chronic stress prior to fin clipping prevents behavioural changes normally seen after fin clip; naloxone treatment prevented this effect, demonstrating stress-induced analgesia.

Summary: Thermal tolerance is associated with hypoxia tolerance in blacktip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) neonates. Both tolerance traits change with thermal acclimation, but aerobic scope and growth rates do not.

Summary: A comparative genomics approach reveals conserved transcription factor consensus sites in the p38 MAPK gene family that regulate stress responses in Drosophila.

Highlighted Article: Viper strike kinematics across a range of ecologically relevant temperatures show that defensive strikes of vipers are affected by temperature, but less than would be expected if the movement was purely muscle-driven.

Summary: Damaraland mole-rat behaviour is modulated by dispersal and dispersal strategy. Non-dispersing mole-rats explore more cautiously; female dispersers approach the learning task differently from males, having a different dispersal strategy.

Summary: Dragonflies with submaximal loads exhibit unprecedentedly high aerodynamic forces after being dropped in mid-air, descending and then recovering in flight; this behavior represents a new context for evaluating limits to force production by flying animals.

Summary: There is a sequence component to route memories in ants, as ants show signs of navigational uncertainty when the familiar sequence of views is suddenly altered.