Issues
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Cover Image
Cover: Black-tailed trainbearers produce an accelerating series of snaps – one of the loudest hummingbird displays – during high-speed dives. Rico-Guevara et al. (jeb243219) solve a long-standing mystery regarding the structures involved in producing these sounds. Although each snap to human ears seems like a single sound, audio recordings reveal a pair of individual impulsive, atonal sounds produced very closely together, and high-speed videos unveil the associated body motions. Contrary to previous hypotheses, the wings, not the extremely elongated tails in males, are responsible for these sonations. This is a within-wing sound production mechanism, and for the first time, the kinematics for this type of loud sonation, and how the sounds are generated in such quick succession, are described. Photo credit: Andrés Vásquez N.
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INSIDE JEB
NEWS
REVIEW
Patterns and processes in amphibious fish: biomechanics and neural control of fish terrestrial locomotion
Summary: Amphibious fishes use a diversity of terrestrial locomotor modes dependent upon body shape, physical constraints and phylogeny.
SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
Oh, snap! A within-wing sonation in black-tailed trainbearers
Summary: Solving a mystery regarding loud displays of trainbearer hummingbirds: high-speed videos unveil that the wings, not the extremely elongated tails in males, are responsible for these sonations.
A hyperpolarizing rod bipolar cell in the sea lamprey, Petromyzon marinus
Summary: Lamprey have novel hyperpolarizing (OFF) retinal bipolar cells receiving purely rod input, unlike gnathostomes from fish to mammals. Retinal organization during evolution may have been more fluid than previously thought.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Long duration advertisement calls of nesting male plainfin midshipman fish are honest indicators of size and condition
Summary: The advertisement calls of nesting male plainfin midshipman fish contain information about size and condition of the calling male, which could potentially be used by females in mate choice decisions.
Network analysis reveals that acute stress exacerbates gene regulatory responses of the gill to seawater in Atlantic salmon
Summary: In juvenile Atlantic salmon, aquaculture-related handling and confinement stress increases investment in seawater-related gene expression as part of a compensatory response to impaired seawater tolerance.
The capture of crude oil droplets by filter feeders at high and low Reynolds numbers
Highlighted Article: Oil droplets are captured by filter feeders at low Reynolds number using thick boundary layers and at high Reynolds number via direct interception.
A mixture of innate cryoprotectants is key for freeze tolerance and cryopreservation of a drosophilid fly larva
Highlighted Article: Components of the natural cryoprotectant mixture of an extremely freeze-tolerant insect work in synergy and behave differently during organismal freezing and cryopreservation.
Random attention can explain apparent object choice behavior in free-walking blowflies
Summary: Walking blowflies apparently choose one of two objects to approach. In model simulations, a fixation scheme combined with random attention replicates this behavior without an explicit decision mechanism.
Sex-specific multivariate morphology/performance relationships in Anolis carolinensis
Summary: Although sexual dimorphism in morphology is common in nature, sex-specific multivariate relationships between morphology and performance in green anole lizards suggest distinct ecological demands in males and females.
Metabolomic and transcriptomic responses of ticks during recovery from cold shock reveal mechanisms of survival
Summary: Transcriptional and metabolomic data reveal mechanisms associated with enhanced cold hardiness in ticks exposed to rapid-cold hardening conditions.
Flexor digitorum brevis utilizes elastic strain energy to contribute to both work generation and energy absorption at the foot
Summary: Demonstration of an adaptive mechanism that enables the intrinsic foot muscles to make versatile contributions to whole-body accelerations and decelerations.
Effects of prey density and flow speed on plankton feeding by garden eels: a flume study
Summary: Analysis of feeding by anchored garden eels in a flume shows their unique strategies, modulating dependence on burrows and foraging movements, to enable effective feeding at a wide range of flow speeds.
Context-dependent relationships between swimming, terrestrial jumping and body composition in the amphibious fish Kryptolebias marmoratus
Summary: Comparison of aquatic and terrestrial athletic performance of an amphibious fish indicates no evidence of a trade-off in locomotor performance, perhaps because they are powered by different subsets of the axial musculature (red versus white).
Inactivity and the passive slowing effect of cold on resting metabolism as the primary drivers of energy savings in overwintering fishes
Editor's Choice: Overwintering behaviour among fishes ranges from dormant to lethargic to active. Energy savings come from activity reductions and passive slowing of metabolism by the cold, not from metabolic rate depression.
Vocal tract allometry in a mammalian vocal learner
Summary: Harbour seals are vocal learners that can escape acoustic allometry despite complying with anatomical allometric constraints. Advanced neural control over their vocal organs may allow them to break acoustic allometry.
Glucose tolerance of iguanas is affected by high-sugar diets in the lab and supplemental feeding by ecotourists in the wild
Highlighted Article: Experimental sugar supplementation in the laboratory and tourist feeding in the wild alter glucose tolerance and metabolism in two species of iguanas.
Using the reactive scope model to redefine social stress in fishes

In their Review, Katie Gilmour and colleagues redefine the ambiguous concept of social stress by using the reactive scope model as a framework to explain the divergent physiological phenotypes of dominant and subordinate fishes.
JEB grants to support junior faculty

Learn about the grants that we launched in 2023 to support junior faculty from two of our awardees: Erin Leonard, Early-Career Researcher (ECR) Visiting Fellowship recipient, and Pauline Fleischmann, Research Partnership Kickstart Travel Grant recipient. The next deadline to apply is 6 June 2025.
Thirteen-lined ground squirrels survive extraordinarily low blood oxygen

Brynne Duffy and colleagues reveal that thirteen-lined ground squirrels are true hypoxia champions surviving extreme low blood oxygen, down to just 34% oxygen, when they emerge briefly from hibernation.
The Company of Biologists Workshops

For the last 15 years, our publisher, The Company of Biologists, has provided an apt environment to inspire biology and support biologists through our Workshops series. Read about the evolution of the Workshop series and revisit JEB's experience with hosting the first Global South Workshop.
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.