Issues

Summary: We provide practical advice for using scientific predictions to design better experiments, and suggest that consideration of both the persuasiveness and criticality of predictions can speed scientific progress.

Summary: Remarkably, fish and amphibians can regenerate their gills throughout their lives. Here, we review this regenerative potential and discuss the common evolutionary and embryological origins shared by gills and mammalian lungs.

Summary: Completion of ventricular septation is required for the presence of the atrioventricular conduction system (AVCS) in extant Archelosauria. AVCS formation is correlated with full ventricular septation in both evolution and development.

Summary: Artificial lighting at night (ALAN) impedes female glow worms’ ability to attract males with their glow, implicating ALAN in glow worm fecundity and long-term population survival.

Summary: The impact of individual microorganisms in the Drosophila gut microbiome on insect nutrition, particularly lipid storage, is strongly dependent on both the presence of co-occurring microorganisms and host sex.

Summary: One source of animal flight tones such as the humming of hummingbirds is Gutin or ‘load’ noise: the equal, opposite reaction to aerodynamic forces developed by flapping wings.

Summary: Manduca sexta show evidence for physiological trade-offs between regulating the gut microbiome and defending themselves against systemic infections, with the response varying according to the number and type of concurrent immune challenges.

Summary: Dehydration during pregnancy negatively affects maternal physiology but has little effect on reproductive output. These effects are additive to temperature regimes and therefore similar in warmer and colder environments.

Summary: Long-duration flight in a migratory bird results in reduced overnight resting metabolic rate, but not peak metabolic rate, and metabolic reduction is not related to flight duration or change in lean body mass.

Summary: Echolocating bats dynamically modulate vocalization amplitude in noise at a sub-call level, demonstrating a high degree of vocal flexibility.

Highlighted Article: The serotonergic system in the nervous system contributes to the initiation of defensive turn responses to unexpected tactile stimuli in the trap-jaw ant.

Editor's choice: Natural incubation temperatures enhance offspring survival in a lizard.

Summary: Analysis of key snail egg proteins shows evolutionary defensive trends associated with phylogenetic position, extending by convergent evolution the presence of plant-like defensive strategies not reported in other animals.

Summary: Avian cardiac cells have large SR stores and large sarcolemmal Ca²⁺ currents; these features may be the key to high performance of the avian heart despite their reptilian-like ultrastructure.

Summary: To effectively disperse from the forest floor into canopies, diurnally hatched stick insect nymphs use gravity and visual cues to navigate, jump to cross gaps and respond to threat or perturbation with self-dropping.

Summary: Analysis of the oil gland in billfishes suggests the oil serves multiple, non-mutually exclusive functions, including hydrodynamic, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effects, and a role in predatory behaviour, shock absorption, buoyancy and vision.

Summary: Adding mass to rat plantaris muscle decreases mechanical work per cycle during cyclic contractions.

Summary: Spontaneous walking and running upstairs, when limited to about two floors, is metabolically well tolerated despite the high mechanical power required, and is possible because of the slow V̇_O2 on-kinetics.

Summary: Mesic parrots control their insensible evaporative water loss at varying ambient relative humidities to the same extent as an arid parrot, suggesting a thermoregulatory role.