Issues
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Cover image
Cover Image
Cover: A Southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) mother grooming her 3-week-old pup's hind flipper with her tongue in Morro Bay, California. Sea otters spend most of their time floating at the surface, and their pups are known to be especially buoyant. Riordan et al. (jeb247134) measured the fur buoyant force of sea otter pelts across ontogeny under normal conditions, when oiled and after washing with Dawn®. When sea otter fur is oiled, the air layer in the fur is compromised and no longer supplies sufficient positive buoyancy. Photo credit: Gena Bentall of Sea Otter Savvy.
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Fish mortality in the Amazonian drought of 2023: the role of experimental biology in our response to climate change
Summary: An extreme drought and heatwave in the Amazon led to mass fish deaths in 2023, highlighting the urgent need for research to understand and mitigate climate impacts on aquatic ecosystems.
SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
Born suckers: the cibarial pump of Philaenus spumarius scales across ontogeny to ensure functional equivalence
Summary: The cibarial pump of xylem-feeding spittlebugs scales with geometric similarity across ontogeny. Thus, their suction capacity remains constant as they grow, enabling them to extract xylem at tensions <1 MPa.
Viewpoint-independent face recognition via extrapolation in paper wasps
Summary: Three-dimensional objects, such as faces, look different from different perspectives. Wasps can identify novel views of conspecific faces using image extrapolation.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Fish communicate with water flow to enhance a school's social network
Summary: Experimental manipulation and kinematics show that water flow serves as a valuable supplement to visual communication in a fish school's social network.
Barometric pressure decrease induces density-dependent changes in foraging behaviour in a parasitoid fly
Highlighted Article: Larval density modulates the effects of barometric pressure on host-seeking behaviour in asilid parasitoid larvae. High-density larvae are non-selective and search for hosts under broader environmental conditions than low-density larvae.
The venom of Habrobracon hebetor induces alterations in host metabolism
Summary: Venom of Habrobracon hebetor causes disturbance of amino acid catabolism, glycolytic and Krebs cycle pathways, ornithine (urea) cycle and lipid metabolism. The main target is the host's fat body.
Mechanically evoked spike responses of pentascolopidial chordotonal organs of Drosophila melanogaster larvae
Summary: The spiking responses of the pentascolopidial chordotonal organ of Drosophila larvae to mechanical stimuli reveal a clear role in proprioception.
Gearing in a hydrostatic skeleton: the tube feet of juvenile sea stars (Leptasterias sp.)
Summary: The morphology of tube feet in sea stars demonstrates a gradient in gearing along each ray that compliments their role in behavior.
A meta-analysis of whole-body and heart mass effect sizes from a long-term artificial selection experiment for high voluntary exercise
Summary: A meta-analysis of whole-body and heart mass in mice from a long-term selection experiment for high voluntary exercise demonstrates the utility of meta-analytic techniques by revealing previously undiscovered trends in existing data.
Interactive effects of temperature and salinity on metabolism and activity of the copepod Tigriopus californicus
Summary: Changes in temperature and salinity interact to affect metabolic rate in the copepod Tigriopus californicus, but the stressors' individual effects and their interaction are complicated by concurrent changes in activity.
A novel comparison of southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) fur buoyancy across ontogeny
Force re-development after shortening reveals a role for titin in stretch–shortening performance enhancement in skinned muscle fibres
Summary: Stretch–shortening cycles enhance force and power output compared with pure shortening contractions. Both cross-bridge and non-cross-bridge structures, such as titin, contribute to this effect, improving force re-development.
Brain energy metabolism as an underlying basis of slow and fast cognitive phenotypes in honeybees
Highlighted Article: Honeybees with fast cognitive phenotypes, prioritizing speed over accuracy, have larger brains with a lower mass-specific brain respiration rate, relative to slow cognitive phenotypes, which prioritize accuracy over speed.
ECR SPOTLIGHTS
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.