Issues

Summary: Insect success on land relies upon limiting water loss from the gut, body surface and respiratory system and also upon enhancing water uptake.

Summary: Similarities among and differences between venom glands of helodermatid lizards and snakes are presented, indicating areas where future studies can contribute to the understanding of these ancient, fascinating secretory systems.

Summary: Experimentally increased perceived nest predation risk did not affect yolk androgen deposition, but decreased yolk progesterone in a cavity-nesting songbird.

Highlighted Article: Sucking lice have a novel water management system exploiting water loss through the respiratory system to replace urine production, which avoids polluting their host's skin and hair.

Summary: Simulation of a combined heatwave and drought to challenge homeostasis in a temperate ectotherm shows that water deprivation and higher body temperatures additively alter physiological state but synergistically lead to increased thirst.

Highlighted Article: Examination of ontogenetic scaling of morphology and locomotion in sidewinder rattlesnakes provides evidence for several significant relationships among morphology, kinematics and whole-animal speed.

Summary: Construction of LymCNS-PDB, the first comprehensive database of the central nervous system proteins of Lymnaea stagnalis, an invertebrate animal used highly successfully in neurobiological analysis of learning and memory.

Summary: A multi-scale comparative study of muscles with different fiber type composition and architecture shows that intricate fine-tuning across gene, protein and fascicle scales shapes specialized muscle function.

Summary: Chronic stress induces significant changes in the microbiome of a wild-caught avian host, including the loss of potentially beneficial bacterial taxa and an increase in potentially inflammatory endotoxin-producing taxa.

Summary: A comparison of thresholds for colour sets with similar orientations in colour space but located at different distances from the adapted achromatic point.

Summary: The triggerfish Rhinecanthus aculeatus is an ideal species for behavioural investigations of visual processes. They express six opsin proteins in different photoreceptors, and their visual acuity is significantly better for achromatic than for chromatic stimuli.

Summary: Dietary omega fatty acids help honey bees sniff out damaged brood odors to prevent disease from spreading in the hive.

Highlighted Article: Increased noise conditions can negatively impact the hearing and inner ear of zebrafish with observable behavioural changes to acoustic stimuli.

Highlighted Article: Modelled field metabolic rate estimates for Greenland sharks living in the Canadian Arctic suggest these animals have very low prey requirements in the wild.

Summary: Investigation of the natural foraging behavior of wild Myotis macrodactylus demostrates that the length of the post-buzz pause is a useful acoustic indicator of predation success.

Summary: Investigation of turning in a knifefish reveals that the body, pectoral fins and an elongated anal fin contribute to turning maneuvers.

Summary: Terrestrial locomotion of a semi-aquatic salamander is associated with ground reaction forces (GRFs) that have slower rates of change and inclinations that are generally intermediate between those of terrestrial salamander limbs and semi-aquatic fins.

Summary: Measurement of the vocal compensation of Daubenton's bats to masking noise reveals that bats defend echo-to-noise ratios by increasing call amplitude but not by spectrally adjusting calls.