Issues

Summary: The Morpho butterfly illustrates the link between curiosity-driven research and much later innovations. Current threats to research funding portend a regression to days where basic research is limited to the wealthy.

Summary: Prolonged hypoxia in Megachile rotundata prepupae increases survival but has no effect on telomere length and oxidative stress, suggesting compensatory responses to maintain oxidative homeostasis.

Summary: The helmet-like orbital hoods of snapping shrimp are primarily protective and neither impair spatial vision nor make meaningful contributions to it.

Summary: Shrimp swimming legs bend nearly horizontally and cluster together during metachronal propulsion to reduce drag and improve overall swimming performance.

Summary: Macronutrient balance is a critical determinant of longevity and reproductive output in the mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor.

Highlighted Article: In the bean bug brain, neurosecretory cells produce corazonin and connect to endocrine organs; silencing corazonin disrupts reproductive arrest under unfavorable short-day conditions, revealing a neural pathway for seasonal reproduction.

Summary: Deer mice native to high altitude have an augmented baroreflex and exhibit stronger cardiovascular responses to hypoxia, which likely helps improve circulatory O₂ transport in their cold hypoxic environment.

Highlighted Article: The consolidation of a recognition memory in crayfish leads to adaptations in autonomic-like responses, such as heart and respiratory rates.

Summary: Voltage-gated ion channel TRP/Painless regulates ion transport in the Malpighian tubules of an important agricultural crop pest, larval lepidopteran Trichoplusia ni.

Summary: A model explaining work done by skeletal muscle in walking indicates that work against environmental forces and work required for the inverted pendulum motion determine required work during walking.

Summary: Some male quails fail to shut down their reproductive axis under short daylengths; uncoupling in the photoperiodic TSH/DIO2-3 pathway may be responsible for this polyphenism.

Highlighted Article: Unsupervised learning and kinematic analyses revealed that spiders with two amputated legs recovered normal running performance after leg regeneration and ≤1 day of limb loss, adopting new gaits and postures to recovery robustly without learning.

Summary: Anthropogenic effects are driving increases in hypoxic events in coastal ecosystems, which threatens marine life. In coral and sea anemone larvae, hypoxia exposure disrupts metabolic performance through conserved and divergent pathways.

Summary: As walking speed slows, the phase shift between kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy increases, reducing pendular energy transduction; simple inverted pendulum models of walking do not capture phase shift changes.

Summary: Examination of walking energetics in African mole-rats reveals higher metabolic costs in Heterocephalus glaber than in Fukomys damarensis, suggesting a trade-off between digging specialisation and locomotion efficiency.

Summary: Two Mediterranean glaphyrid beetle pollinators see, select and prefer red flower colours.

Highlighted Article: Artificial light at night disrupts basal thermogenesis and gut microbiota in zebra finches but has no significant impact on Bengalese finches, highlighting species-specific physiological responses and host–microbiota interactions.

Summary: Maintaining an upregulated gastrointestinal tract is of minimal cost in pythons, and is only a small component of specific dynamic action (SDA) and therefore does not require significant emphasis in studies of the SDA response.