Issues

Summary: This Commentary summarises conflicting perspectives on the relationship between the specific dynamic action (SDA) and animal growth, and proposes research directions aimed at determining the nature of the SDA.

Highlighted Article: Decades of discrepancies and disagreements regarding whether air temperature affects the flight metabolism of honey bees can be reconciled by considering the thermal performance curve of flight muscle.

Summary: The flexible recruitment of the four well-known muscle synergies responsible for unperturbed walking during unpredictable and predictable gait perturbations indicates an effective way to counteract locomotor perturbations, where fast reactive responses are necessary to maintain postural stability.

Highlighted Article: High-altitude native deer mice increase brown adipose tissue fatty acid uptake to support maximal heat production following acclimation to cold hypoxic conditions.

Highlighted Article: A functional clockwork and circadian variation in mitochondrial complex I efficiency is demonstrated in skin fibroblasts from the deep-diving hooded seal.

Highlighted Article: The relative sizes of visual features in an African cichlid respond plastically to turbidity during development; for older fish, parental population drives the response of visual traits to turbidity.

Summary: Zebra finch vocal muscle exhibits superfast shortening velocities that correlate with isometric performance. The low power output highlights the importance of high-frequency operation in muscles modulating vocal output.

Summary: A UV component of colour signals and cues improves detectability in anemonefish, which likely increases the prominence of their body patterns for communication and the silhouette of zooplankton prey.

Summary: Despite an arboreal evolutionary history, humans display unique climbing characteristics compared with non-human primates; namely, extreme functional differentiation between forelimbs and hindlimbs and a hindlimb-powered gait.

Summary: During fast bipedal locomotion macaques prefer to skip; the leg torque differs between the trailing and leading leg but not the transmitted impulses. Double support is crucial for the jump.