CLASSICS
REVIEW
- Sensing in a noisy world: lessons from auditory specialists, echolocating bats
Summary: Researchers use echolocating bats – with their adaptations for sound production and reception – as models for understanding how animals sense and communicate in noisy environments.
SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
- Characterizing the distribution of steroid sulfatase during embryonic development: when and where might metabolites of maternal steroids be reactivated?
Summary: Steroid sulfatase activity hydrolyzes steroid sulfates back to an active form. Here we demonstrate steroid sulfatase is present in various tissues during embryonic development.
- Respiratory consequences of targeted losses of Hoxa5 gene function in mice
Summary: HOXA5 is a transcription factor broadly expressed in the respiratory system; Hoxa5 expression in the mesenchyme and phrenic motor neurons controls distinct aspects of respiratory development.
- Head orientation of walking blowflies is controlled by visual and mechanical cues
Summary: Both mechanical and visual cues contribute to gaze orientation during free walking in blowflies, and when visual cues are lacking, more weight is given to gravity.
- Low glucose availability stimulates progesterone production by mouse ovaries in vitro
Summary: Mouse ovaries respond directly to low glucose availability by increasing progesterone production; this may contribute to homeostatic processes that positively regulate blood glucose.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
- Pharmacological analysis of the transmembrane action potential configuration in myoepithelial cells of the spontaneously beating heart of the ascidian Styela rustica in vitro
Summary: The key role in the automaticity of the ascidian heart is played by the outward K+ currents, Na+ currents, activated hyperpolarization current If, and a current of unknown nature IX.
- Thermal strategies of king penguins during prolonged fasting in water
Summary: Maintenance of near-normothermic temperatures in peripheral tissues of king penguins when fasting in cold water suggests maintained perfusion, presumably to mobilize free fatty acids from subcutaneous adipose tissue.
- The opercular mouth-opening mechanism of largemouth bass functions as a 3D four-bar linkage with three degrees of freedom
Editors’ Choice: Extension of the traditional 2D four-bar linkage to a high-mobility, 3D four-bar linkage accurately predicts the motion of a mouth-opening mechanism in the skull of ray-finned fishes.
- Fighting over burrows: the emergence of dominance hierarchies in the Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus)
Summary: Dominant Norway lobsters profit from their rank in a social hierarchy by gaining increased access to burrows and by reducing activity outside the shelters as the hierarchy emerges.
- Thermal tachypnea in avian embryos
Summary: Chicken embryos during the internal pipping phase (at a time when pulmonary ventilation initiates) are capable of responding to heat exposure by tachypnea.
- A new method to characterize function of the Drosophila heart by means of optical flow
Summary: The analysis of coherent movement in Drosophila is established as a suitable indicator of qualitative changes of the heart's beating characteristics, which improves the usefulness of Drosophila as model of cardiac diseases.
- Free-ranging dogs prefer petting over food in repeated interactions with unfamiliar humans
Summary: Free-ranging dogs are generally aversive towards making direct human contact for food. Interestingly, they show enhanced interactions with humans who provide them with positive social contact.
- Aversive learning of odor–heat associations in ants
Highlighted Article: A new protocol to study aversive conditioning in harnessed ants exploiting the natural aggressive mandible opening response shows that ants are capable of aversive learning.
- Myogenic activity and serotonergic inhibition in the chromatophore network of the squid Dosidicus gigas (family Ommastrephidae) and Doryteuthis opalescens (family Loliginidae)
Summary: A comparative physiological and immunohistochemical examination of coordinated activity among squid chromatophores in the absence of neural control and serotonin inhibition.
- Neuromuscular mechanisms of an elaborate wing display in the golden-collared manakin (Manacus vitellinus)
Summary: We pinpoint the main skeletal muscles associated with the production of an elaborate gestural courtship display in a tropical bird, the golden-collared manakin.
- Context-dependent chemosensory signaling, aggression and neural activation patterns in gravid female African cichlid fish
Summary: Gravid female cichlids show altered urine release and behavioral responses during inter- and intra-sexual social interactions. Brain activation patterns in socially relevant regions reveal context-dependent patterns.
- Durophagous biting in sea otters (Enhydra lutris) differs kinematically from raptorial biting of other marine mammals
Summary: Sea otters represent a transitional stage of aquatic adaptation and use a specialized durophagous raptorial biting mode characterized by large gapes, large gape angles and lack of lateral gape occlusion.
- Effects of food availability on metabolism, behaviour, growth and their relationships in a triploid carp
Summary: Food availability significantly affects physiological, behavioural and ecological processes in triploid carp by altering the trade-off between metabolism and growth.
- Functional classification of gill ionocytes and spatiotemporal changes in their distribution after transfer from seawater to freshwater in Japanese seabass
Summary: Gill ionocytes in Japanese seabass originate from undifferentiated cells in the filaments and expand their distribution to the lamellae during freshwater acclimation.
- The force-generation process in active muscle is strain sensitive and endothermic: a temperature-perturbation study
Summary: A temperature jump applied at the onset of ramp shortening enhanced force during the initial phase of force decline, indicating that cross-bridge force generation is both strain-sensitive and endothermic (absorbs heat).
CORRECTIONS
This issue
Other journals from The Company of Biologists
Editorial – The changing of the guard
In his Editorial, Hans Hoppeler announces that he will be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of JEB in July 2020. He reflects on the history of JEB, why he has enjoyed his tenure as JEB’s Editor-in-Chief and the recent developments in the publishing world.
Big Biology podcast
JEB is partnering with the Big Biology podcast and in this sponsored episode, JEB Editor Michael Dickinson talks to the Big Biology team about the aerodynamic mechanisms of insect flight, how insects control flight with their tiny 100k neuron brain and his recent JEB paper showing how fruit flies navigate using the sun and polarized light as a compass.
Editors’ choice – An appetite for invasion: digestive physiology, thermal performance and food intake in lionfish (Pterois spp.)
Invasive lionfish are a colossal problem in the Mediterranean Sea and western Atlantic Ocean. Now it turns out that they are successful invaders because they invest more energy in digestion than moving about.
Travelling Fellowship – Anti-ageing in the Greenland Shark
Find out how Pierre Delaroche’s Travelling Fellowship grant from the Journal of Experimental Biology took him to Greenland, where he gathered data to further understand the ageing process in the longest-living vertebrate known to science. Don’t miss the next application deadline for 2020 travel, coming up on 29 November. Where will your research take you?
Commentary – Yank: the time derivative of force is an important biomechanical variable in sensorimotor systems
The derivative of force with respect to time does not have a standard term in physics. In their new Commentary, David C. Lin and his colleagues propose that the term ‘yank’ should be used to denote the time derivative of force.
Runners waste energy every time their legs stop swinging, but now a team of scientists from the US and Canada have shown that a springy ankle tether can reduce runners’ energy costs by 6.4%, which is nearly the entire cost of swinging the limbs. Read the full research article here.
Journal of Experimental Biology is pleased to announce a new partnership with Publons! This allows reviewers to easily track and verify every review by choosing to add the review to their Publons profile when completing the review submission form. Publons also makes it simple for reviewers to showcase their peer review contributions in a format that can be included in job and funding applications (without breaking reviewer anonymity). Read the official announcement here!
preLights – Oxygenation properties of hemoglobin and the evolutionary origins of isoform multiplicity in an amphibious air-breathing fish, the blue-spotted mudskipper (Boleophthalmus pectinirostris)
Charlotte Nelson highlights work in mudskippers suggesting that a diversity in expressed hemoglobin isoforms is not required for the switch between aquatic and aerial respiration.