Issues
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Cover image
Cover Image
Cover: Unable to break the water’s surface tension, young tadpoles breathe air by bubble-sucking – attaching to the water’s undersurface, drawing air into the mouth and forcing it into the lungs. Phillips and colleagues (jeb219311) show, however, that gray tree frog (Hyla versicolor) tadpoles continue bubble-sucking through metamorphosis (pictured), even though they have grown sufficiently large to breach the surface and breathe air directly, as in other tadpoles. Rather, these bubble-sucking specialists transition from typical bubble-sucking to double bubble-sucking, a newly described breathing behavior that increases the efficiency of gas exchange by eliminating mixing of expiratory and inspiratory air-streams. Photo credit: Kurt Schwenk.
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INSIDE JEB
OUTSIDE JEB
COMMENTARY
Connecting brain to behaviour: a role for general purpose steering circuits in insect orientation?
Summary: We describe how a highly conserved insect brain region may play a general role in a wide variety of insect orientation behaviours.
REVIEW
Surprising simplicities and syntheses in limbless self-propulsion in sand
Summary: Dry sandy environments present challenges to animal locomotion, but are also amenable to several useful experimental and theoretical methods, which can generate uncommonly rich insights into animal locomotion.
SHORT COMMUNICATION
Facultative hyperthermia during a heatwave delays injurious dehydration of an arboreal marsupial
Highlighted Article: When it is hot outside, a possum can save water and avoid dangerous levels of dehydration by letting its body temperature rise with the heat.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
The startle reflex in echolocating odontocetes: basic physiology and practical implications
Summary: The acoustic startle reflex is conserved in echolocating toothed whales and should be considered when predicting marine mammal responses to human-generated underwater noise.
Assessing intracellular pH regulation in H+-ATPase-rich ionocytes in zebrafish larvae using in vivo ratiometric imaging
Summary: Intracellular pH measurements in vivo in ion-transporting cells of zebrafish larvae reveal the roles of ion-transport-related proteins in intracellular acid–base regulation.
Improved mitochondrial coupling as a response to high mass-specific metabolic rate in extremely small mammals
Editors' Choice: An extremely small mammal, Mus mattheyi, exhibits lower cellular oxygen consumption and higher mitochondrial efficiency than predicted from allometric trends, generating more cellular energy per oxygen molecule to ensure its homeostasis.
Choice consequences: salinity preferences and hatchling survival in the mangrove rivulus (Kryptolebias marmoratus)
Summary: The euryhaline fish Krytolebias marmoratus likely experiences highest fitness at low salinities, and salinity microhabitats expose behavioral variation among individuals, upon which selection can act.
Hypoxia tolerance is unrelated to swimming metabolism of wild, juvenile striped bass (Morone saxatilis)
Summary: Striped bass show a significantly repeatable increase in hypoxia tolerance after repeated exposures, which is largely unrelated to an individual's oxygen consumption while swimming in either hypoxia or normoxia.
Ontogenesis of evolved changes in respiratory physiology in deer mice native to high altitude
Summary: Evolved changes in the control and pattern of breathing in high-altitude deer mice arise in early ontogeny during the developmental transition to endothermy.
Stroke effort and relative lung volume influence heart rate in diving sea lions
Summary: California sea lion diving heart rate is influenced by exercise and relative lung volume.
Cardiovascular responses to progressive hypoxia in ducks native to high altitude in the Andes
Summary: An increased blood-oxygen carrying capacity provides high-altitude ducks in the Andes with a greater reserve for O2 delivery in hypoxia.
A salamander that chews using complex, three-dimensional mandible movements
Summary: 3D kinematics and morphological analysis reveal that the paedomorphic salamander Siren intermedia uses complex 3D chewing, suggesting that such mechanisms might have evolved early in the tetrapod evolution.
The mechanics of air breathing in gray tree frog tadpoles, Hyla versicolor (Anura: Hylidae)
Summary: Tadpoles suck bubbles from the water's surface to breathe air, but gray tree frog tadpoles suck two bubbles. Double bubble-sucking prevents mixing of expired and inspired airstreams, increasing respiratory efficiency.
Hyperbaric tracheobronchial compression in cetaceans and pinnipeds
Summary: Compression in cetacean and pinniped airways during hyperbaric diving simulations indicates that gas exchange ceases at deeper depths than expected with rigid airways, potentially increasing susceptibility to decompression sickness.
The shape effect of flagella is more important than bottom-heaviness on passive gravitactic orientation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
Summary: Viscous drag of flagella rather than density asymmetry orients the Chlamydomonas cells upwards in gravitaxis.
Fatty acid composition and N2 solubility in triacylglycerol-rich adipose tissue: the likely importance of intact molecular structure
Summary: Despite variation in nitrogen solubility across 12 diving tetrapods, we found no link to fatty acid pools comprising their lipids; perhaps the structures of intact lipid molecules are the key.
Dynamic changes in cytoskeleton proteins of olfactory ensheathing cells induced by radiofrequency electromagnetic fields
Summary: Exposure to continuous and amplitude-modulated radiofrequency electromagnetic fields induces different effects on olfactory ensheathing cell viability; marker expression level indicates a role in cell self-renewal.
Acceleration-triggered animal-borne videos show a dominance of fish in the diet of female northern elephant seals
Highlighted Article: Seal-borne acceleration-triggered video cameras showed that, in the mesopelagic zones across the eastern North Pacific, female northern elephant seals feed mainly on fish rather than squid.
Analysis of ants’ rescue behavior reveals heritable specialization for first responders
Summary: Rescue behavior, in which Cataglyphis cursor ants release entrapped nestmates, is heritable. Heretofore, this behavior has been overlooked in analyses of division of labor in ants.
Honeybees fail to discriminate floral scents in a complex learning task after consuming a neonicotinoid pesticide
Summary: Honeybees exposed to the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam cannot perform a complex learning task. Honeybees exposed to other neonicotinoids such as imidacloprid and clothianidin, can learn this task, but at a slower rate.
Uncoiling springs promote mechanical functionality of spider cribellate silk
Summary: The coiled fibers of cribellate silk threads produced by Psechrus clavis spiders enhance prey capture in webs by increasing thread extensibility.
In the field: an interview with Sönke Johnsen
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Sönke Johnsen is a Professor at Duke University, USA, investigating visual ecology and he talks about his experiences of collecting transparent animals while blue water diving and in a submersible, as well as outrunning Hurricane Katrina.
Call for new preLighters
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preLights is the preprint highlighting community supported by The Company of Biologists. At the heart of preLights are our preLighters: early-career researchers who select and write about interesting new preprints for the research community. We are currently looking for new preLighters to join our team. Find out more and apply here.
Graham Scott in conversation with Big Biology

Graham Scott talks to Big Biology about the oxygen cascade in mice living on mountaintops, extreme environments for such small organisms. In this JEB-sponsored episode, they discuss the concept of symmorphosis and the evolution of the oxygen cascade.
Trap-jaw ants coordinate tendon and exoskeleton for perfect mandible arc
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Trap-jaw ants run the risk of tearing themselves apart when they fire off their mandibles, but Greg Sutton & co have discovered that the ants simultaneously push and pull the mandibles using energy stored in a head tendon and their exoskeleton to drive the jaws in a perfect arc.
Hearing without a tympanic ear
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In their Review, Grace Capshaw, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard and Catherine Carr explore the mechanisms of hearing in extant atympanate vertebrates and the implications for the early evolution of tympanate hearing.