Issues

Summary: This Review considers the fundamentally different types of brains of diverse and distantly related animal species that give rise to number skills across the animal kingdom.

Summary: A method for 3-D reconstruction of the continuous body of limbless animals achieves higher accuracy than the widely used B-spline method and is useful for quantifying body–environment interactions.

Highlighted Article: Analysis of movement costs and characteristics of landscape use by grizzly bears reveals inherent similarities in travel between grizzly bears and humans, increasing the risk of encounters on shared landscapes.

Summary: Solitary bees experience neuroanatomical growth in response to social experience, but similar changes do not occur with age. This reveals how neuroplasticity may be related to social evolution.

Highlighted Article: The number of CpG sites in the promoter of a microbial surveillance gene (TLR4) predicted gene expression in house sparrows in a tissue- and sex-specific manner.

Highlighted Article: Dwarf sperm whales produce echolocation clicks with short-range characteristics that are counterintuitive for their use in deep-diving foraging contexts in the open ocean.

Summary: Caffeine and l-arginine, secondary compounds found in nectar, can improve honeybee cognitive skills and survival when presented in combination, rather than individually.

Summary: Ocean acidification reduces olfactory sensitivity in fish; this is due to both the reduction in pH and a direct effect of increased CO₂.

Summary: The emergence of the migratory phenotype in birds is associated with changes in oxidative status.

Summary: American lobsters detect low-frequency sounds, with best sensitivity in the frequency range (80–120 Hz) of the buzzing sounds they are known to produce, supporting their use in intraspecific communication.

Summary: Genetically masculinized female Drosophilamelanogaster change their fighting strategy depending on the sexual identity of their opponents. With more aggressive flies, these females adapt to higher intensity levels.

Summary: Effects of wave-driven flow on the behavioural and kinematic components of fish escape responses depend on body morphology and the timing and trajectory of escape responses in relation to the wave phase.

Summary: Behavioral thermoregulation in Tropidurus catalanensis is affected by food consumption and not by hydration state. Additionally, thermoregulation mediated by food consumption does not conflict with the lizards’ locomotor activity.

Summary: European perch can adjust physiological traits during chronic warming to promote hypoxia tolerance, suggesting that eurythermal fishes may be relatively robust to chronic warming and hypoxic events under climate change.

Highlighted Article:Drosophila mitochondrial functions persist at temperatures above organismal heat limits but turn to oxidation of alternative substrates as complex I-supported respiration is impaired.

Summary: The frugivorous bat Carollia perspicillata dynamically adjusts different echolocation parameters when echolocating in acoustically contaminated environments.

Summary: A new method to estimate the spring–mass characteristics of runners is presented using nonlinear regression techniques with vertical ground reaction force recordings, which yields spring-mass parameter sets that produce more stable simulated running.

Summary: The ROS scavenger PDTC decreases murine heart rate, both alone and in combination with exercise, and modulates skeletal muscle adaptation to exercise at multiple levels.

Highlighted Article: Zebra finches can discriminate vocalisations of familiar from those of unfamiliar conspecifics even when all sing the same song; some classified their own song as familiar and might thus have recognised themselves.

Summary: Long-term alternation of phototactic behaviour in the marbled crayfish by aversive operant conditionings is mediated by new protein synthesis through the cAMP/PKA/CREB signal cascade.

Summary: Analysis of calcium transporter expression in the highly placentotrophic lizard Mabuya indicates the parallel co-option of calcium transporter genes in lizard and mammalian placentation.

Highlighted Article: Cardiac physiology, enzyme activity and metabolomic analyses revealed the physiological adaptations to heat of Echinolittorina malaccana, including depressed cardiac activity, metabolic depression and alterations in glycerophospholipid metabolism.

Summary: Mice freeze in response to stimuli moving overhead. This defensive behaviour habituates with repeated exposure in a stimulus-specific way.

Summary: In blow fly larvae, collective choice accuracy increases with increasing larval density while interspecific interactions lead to a choice reversal towards sub-optimal food.