Editors’ choice – Accurate archerfish calculate fly height in an instant

Our most recent Editors’ choice is a pair of articles that examine rapid depth perception in hunting archerfish from Caroline P. Reinel and Stefan Schuster (I. The predictive C-starts, II. An analysis of potential cues). Archerfish have an impressive ability to predict where the prey that they topple from perches will land and now it turns out that they are able to calculate the height that a victim will fall in the first 100 ms of the descent.

Featured article – Dragonfly haemolymph looks more like ancestors’

Animals that live in the air have high levels of CO₂ in their bodies, while aquatic species have lower CO₂ levels, but what about the internal CO₂ levels of animals that evolved in air but returned to the water for part of their lives? Philip Matthews and colleagues have discovered that the CO₂ in the haemolymph of aquatic dragonfly nymphs is high, like that of air breathers, even though they live in water.

Conversation – Erika Eliason

“So much of science is about things going wrong, failing epically, and I think you have to be able to pick yourself up and figure out what went wrong.”

Erika Eliason is an Assistant Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, where she studies ecological and evolutionary physiology. She shares how a childhood spent discovering the natural world in the woods where she grew up ignited her love for science and fieldwork, why conferences should be more family-friendly and the importance of being prepared for the unexpected.

Commentary – Mechanisms underpinning the beneficial effects of fluctuating thermal regimes in insect cold tolerance

Exposure to low temperature often results in death or injury for insects. However, repeated brief warm pulses during periods of low-temperature stress have been shown to confer some protection. Kendra J. Greenlee and colleagues provide an overview of the critical elements that underpin this phenomenon.

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 - stop by and say hello! Advance registration is open until 24 September 2018.

preLights – Are Robofish accepted as a guppy conspecific?

Rasmus Ern highlights a preprint in which Jens Krause and colleagues use a magnet-controlled, 3D-printed fish replica to study social responsiveness in guppies.