Issues
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Cover image
Cover Image
Cover: A grey-headed albatross (Thalassarche chrysostoma) preens its young chick while waiting for its mate to return from foraging at sea. Kroeger et al. (jeb228585) found that in the early chick-rearing stage, grey-headed albatrosses and sympatrically breeding Campbell albatrosses (T. impavida) expended more daily energy at sea when they had younger chicks. Although daily energy expenditure was similar for both species, lower lipid reserves in grey-headed albatrosses indicate that they may dedicate less energy to self-maintenance during this breeding stage. This energy deficit may contribute to their biennial breeding patterns compared with the Campbell albatrosses that breed annually. Photo credit: Caitlin Kroeger.
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INSIDE JEB
OUTSIDE JEB
COMMENTARY
Structural plasticity of the avian pectoralis: a case for geometry and the forgotten organelle
Summary: The plasticity of the avian pectoralis muscle provides the perfect system with which to address generalizable principles relating to the underlying structure of muscle and how it changes within the organism.
REVIEW
Rheotaxis revisited: a multi-behavioral and multisensory perspective on how fish orient to flow
Summary: This Review aims to place rheotaxis in a larger behavioral and multisensory context to enhance our understanding of the biophysical and sensorineural basis of this simple behavior.
SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
Functional flexibility in a spider's orb web
Summary: Testing of an orb weaver's predation strategy in distorted webs reveals that despite the distortion, spiders remained effective at identifying, locating and capturing prey, but take somewhat longer to do so.
Stretch–excitation correlation in the toad heart
Summary: Demonstration of an association between ventricular activation and stretch patterns in the amphibian heart, implying the existence of a stretch–excitation relationship that may explain the variability of cardiac excitation in ectotherms.
The relationship between longevity and diet is genotype dependent and sensitive to desiccation in Drosophila melanogaster
Summary: Lifespan extension under dietary restriction can occasionally be obscured. In Drosophila melanogaster, a robust appreciation of dietary reaction norms is necessary to conclude an absence of the dietary restriction longevity effect.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
High-lipid prey reduce juvenile survivorship and delay egg laying in a small linyphiid spider Hylyphantes graminicola
Summary: Feeding on high-lipid prey reduces survival before maturation and delays egg laying among females in a small, sit-and-wait, sheet web-building spider, Hylyphantes graminicola.
Rapid-warming tolerance correlates with tolerance to slow warming but not growth at non-optimal temperatures in zebrafish
Summary: We show that critical thermal maximum (CTmax), measured at a rapid warming rate, is a relevant proxy for more prolonged thermal challenges, but cannot be used to predict growth rate in zebrafish.
Hormone-mediated dispersal and sexual maturation in males of the social paper wasp Polistes lanio
Summary: Delayed dispersal from the natal nest by male paper wasps is regulated by juvenile hormone and associated with sexual maturation.
Different amplitudes of temperature fluctuation induce distinct transcriptomic and metabolomic responses in the dung beetle Phanaeus vindex
Highlighted Article: Dung beetles respond to temperature fluctuations in different ways depending on the amplitude of fluctuation. However, any temperature fluctuation increased transcripts associated with open chromatin structure relative to constant temperatures.
Artificial selection for schooling behaviour and its effects on associative learning abilities
Summary: Associative learning is not tightly linked with the evolution of collective motion, but provides a starting point towards understanding the underlying patterns that drive collective motion.
Parental LC-PUFA biosynthesis capacity and nutritional intervention with alpha-linolenic acid affect performance of Sparus aurata progeny
Summary: Offspring growth and polyunsaturated fatty acid (LC-PUFA) utilization is linked to parental long-chain biosynthesis capacity and nutrition during the spawning period.
Two lines of evidence for physiological control of insensible evaporative water loss by a tiny marsupial
Summary: Robust evidence of evaporative water loss control for a tiny arid-habitat dasyurid marsupial is provided by the comparison of two independent techniques for manipulating the evaporative environment.
A low-cost method for carrying loads during human walking
Summary: In humans, carrying loads on the swinging arms is as costly as carrying loads at the waist, despite the expectation that swinging a mass about a limb should be much more costly.
Orientation to polarized light in tethered flying honeybees
Summary: Tethered flying bees exhibit polarotaxis under an overhead rotating e-vector stimulus, in which their right-and-left abdominal movements coincide with the rotation of the stimulus, indicating that flying bees utilize e-vector information from the skylight for steering.
Photoreceptors and diurnal variation in spectral sensitivity in the fiddler crab Gelasimus dampieri
Summary: Fiddler crabs have the physiological basis for colour vision with two distinct photoreceptors: one sensitive to ultraviolet and one sensitive to blue. There are diurnal shifts in their spectral sensitivity.
Similar foraging energetics of two sympatric albatrosses despite contrasting life histories and wind-mediated foraging strategies
Highlighted Article: Related albatrosses have similar guard-stage foraging costs despite life history and foraging strategy differences; however, lighter forecasted wind in endemic albatross ranges may increase take-off costs and increase sit-and-wait strategies.
There and back again – a zebra's tale
Highlighted Article: Modelling of high-accuracy GPS recordings shows zebra moving between grazeland and water can navigate using multiple distinct routes; they do not need to use the same route every journey.
Telomere dynamics from hatching to sexual maturity and maternal effects in the ‘multivariate egg’
Highlighted Article: Antagonistic effects of maternal antibodies and egg testosterone modulate offspring telomere length over growth in zebra finch fledglings.
Embracing allyship in experimental biology to help close the gender gap

In their Perspective, Janneke Schwaner and Ksenia Keplinger propose 10 useful strategies for experimental biologists at all career stages to become active allies for gender diversity and inclusion and to help close the gender gap in our field.
The Company of Biologists celebrates its first Global South Workshop

In March 2024, Andrea Fuller and Kênia Bicego organised the first Global South (GS) Workshop hosted by The Company of Biologists - How Global South Research Can Shape the Future of Comparative Physiology - bringing together ECRs from the GS and international experts in the Kruger National Park, South Africa. Find out about this extraordinary meeting in our Perspective.
High-resolution WildPose 3D scans revolutionise biomechanics in the wild

Collecting detailed kinematics from animals in the wild is a holy grail of biomechanics, and now Naoya Muramatsu and colleagues reveal the extraordinary observations that they have made with their new WildPose wildlife motion capture system in South Africa.
Interviews with Biologists @ 100 conference speakers

Explore our interviews with keynote speakers from the Biologists @ 100 conference, hosted to celebrate our publisher’s 100th anniversary, where we discuss climate change and biodiversity with Hans-Otto Pörtner and Jane Francis, health and disease with Charles Swanton and Sadaf Farooqi, and emerging technologies with Manu Prakash and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz.
Fast & Fair peer review

Our sister journal Biology Open has recently launched the next phase of their Fast & Fair peer review initiative: offering high-quality peer review within 7 working days. To learn more about BiO’s progress and future plans, read the Editorial by Daniel Gorelick, or visit the Fast & Fair peer review page.