Conversation – Philip Matthews

“You have to be able to build things, to troubleshoot, to solve little problems”

Philip Matthews is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he studies the respiratory adaptations of insects. He recently spoke to us about how he has always been a biology nerd, how ecophysiology combined everything that he was interested in and how researchers need to have a practical side.

Review – Rethinking the evolution of the human foot: insights from experimental research

Nicholas B. Holowka and Daniel E. Lieberman discuss how recent biomechanical models of human foot function and experimental locomotion data from great apes suggest that the human foot evolved to facilitate both bipedal walking and running.

Featured article – Decisive sea otters distinguish differences by touch

^{Photo credit: Ari Friedlander (permit no. USFWS MA186914-2)}
Sea otters dine on shellfish dinners, but how do they locate these delicacies in the murky waters of Monterey Bay? Sarah McKay Strobel and colleagues have discovered that the animals’ paws and whiskers are remarkably sensitive (in both air and water) allowing them to identify objects with a single paw tap, raising the possibility that they are able to recognise morsels swiftly by touch while diving.

Commentary – Physiology, activity and costs of parental care in birds

Tony D. Williams explores how, contrary to expectation, parental care might not involve sustained, high-intensity activity; that is, it might not be ‘hard work’ and, consequently, costs of reproduction and physiological signatures of costs might rarely be experienced.

Meet the team

Are you going to the 2018 APS Comparative Physiology meeting in October? This meeting is supported by JEB and our Reviews Editor Charlotte Rutledge will be there - say hello! 

preLights – Preprint highlights, selected by the biological community

Meet the preLighters! In the latest interview with our preLights community, the preLights team caught up with Heath MacMillan, Assistant Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, to talk about his research, lab and preprints. His lab is studying the mechanisms of thermal tolerance in insects and aims to answer questions like ‘Why can one species survive a Canadian winter while the other cannot?’.