INSIDE JEB
OUTSIDE JEB
COMMENTARY
- Developmental phenotypic plasticity helps bridge stochastic weather events associated with climate change
Summary: Unpredictable environmental phenomena associated with climate change can be challenging to developing organisms, but developmental phenotypic plasticity may be key to their survival.
METHODS AND TECHNIQUES
- An eDNA-qPCR assay to detect the presence of the parasite Schistocephalus solidus inside its threespine stickleback host
Summary: A non-lethal approach to detect an internal parasitic worm using environmental DNA extracted from fluids sampled from the fish host’s body cavity.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
- Flying Drosophila melanogaster maintain arbitrary but stable headings relative to the angle of polarized light
Summary: Relative to celestial cues, fruit flies select unpredictable flight headings and maintain them with gradually increasing fidelity. This may be a general dispersal strategy for animals with no target destination.
- Linking developmental diet to adult foraging choice in Drosophila melanogaster
Summary: Drosophila melanogaster shows sexual dimorphism in the effect of developmental diet on adult foraging choice, and life-stage dependency of the effects of diet on lifespan.
- Rapid adaptive response to a Mediterranean environment reduces phenotypic mismatch in a recent amphibian invader
Highlighted Article: The integration of field and laboratory experiments shows that a recent amphibian invader reduces phenotypic mismatch with the novel environment through physiological and behavioural responses across an unusually short time scale.
- Coping with the climate: cuticular hydrocarbon acclimation of ants under constant and fluctuating conditions
Summary: Ants adjust their cuticular hydrocarbon layer to humidity and temperature, thereby maintaining its functionality for waterproofing and communication. Varying and constant temperature regimes had different effects on hydrocarbon composition.
- A pathogenic skin fungus and sloughing exacerbate cutaneous water loss in amphibians
Highlighted Article: Infection with Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis causes significant mortality in amphibians not only via electrolyte imbalance, but also through increased water loss that is exacerbated by routine skin sloughing.
- Visual discrimination transfer and modulation by biogenic amines in honeybees
Summary: Honeybees can transfer visual information from a classical to an operant context and appetitive visual learning in honeybees is modulated by octopamine and dopamine.
- Reflectance variation in the blue tit crown in relation to feather structure
Summary: Using spectrometry, photographic analysis of feather macrostructure and transmission electron microscopy, we detect a previously unappreciated role for macrostructure in explaining individual differences in structural plumage colour.
- Independent and combined effects of egg pro- and anti-oxidants on gull chick phenotype
Summary: Supplementation of either vitamin E or corticosterone in the egg reduces body mass of gull hatchlings; combined administration of the two compounds nullifies their independent effects.
- Effects of long-term sucrose overfeeding on rat brown adipose tissue: a structural and immunohistochemical study
Summary: Three weeks of sucrose overfeeding affects histological organisation, UCP1 and noradrenaline immunoexpression, and stereological characteristics of rat brown adipose tissue in a way that is suggestive of thermogenic activation.
- Variation in hearing within a wild population of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas)
Summary: The first auditory data for a population of healthy wild odontocetes shows that belugas have sensitive hearing with limited hearing loss and thresholds that approach quiet ambient noise conditions.
- Effect of water temperature on diel feeding, locomotion behaviour and digestive physiology in the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus
Summary: Diel feeding and locomotion behaviours in sea cucumber are not controlled by water temperature in the short term.
- Heat- and humidity-induced plastic changes in body lipids and starvation resistance in the tropical fly Zaprionus indianus during wet and dry seasons
Summary: In adult Zaprionus indianus in wet or dry seasons, different heat or humidity acclimation conditions have resulted in significant changes in the levels of body lipids in order to cope with starvation stress.
- A simple model predicts energetically optimised jumping in dogs
Summary: A simple model of jumping mechanics is used to show that domestic dogs use complex anticipatory control to systematically choose jump trajectories close to those that minimise mechanical energy.
- Shock attenuation in the human lumbar spine during walking and running
Highlighted Article: Human lumbar lordosis helps balance our bipedal trunk but also plays an important role in attenuating shocks transmitted through the spine during high-impact activities such as running.
This issue
Other journals from The Company of Biologists
Editors’ choice – Vision is highly sensitive to oxygen availability in marine invertebrate larvae
Visual systems are highly metabolically demanding, making them sensitive to fluctuations in oxygen. For marine animals, vision is crucial to survival, but oxygen levels can vary greatly over time and depending on water depth. Lillian McCormick, Lisa Levin and Nicholas Oesch now assess the impact of reduced oxygen on the vision of marine invertebrate larvae.
“When I started at Carleton, I was interested in physics, but it turned out that I was inspired by my high school teacher and not by the subject itself.”
Heath MacMillan is an Assistant Professor at Carleton University, Canada, where he studies the physiological mechanisms limiting ectotherm performance. In this interview, Heath talks about what inspired him to become a scientist, his experience as an early career researcher, and his opinion on pre-prints in the comparative physiology field.
Obituary – Ewald R. Weibel (1929-2019)
Ewald R. Weibel passed away in February, aged 89. He continued to be fully engaged scientifically at the time of his death, preparing a draft introduction for his ultimate research paper just two weeks before his final hospitalization, write Hans Hoppeler and Stan Lindstedt. His articles and books cover three main areas: lung structure and function, stereology, and the design of the respiratory system. He will be remembered as an outstanding scientist.
The Peter Baker Fellowship is for post-doctoral scientists interested in marine biology research, especially physiological research. This fund is held in trust by the Physiological Society, The Company of Biologists and the Marine Biological Association. Application deadline: 31 January 2020.
If you’re going to the SEB annual meeting in Seville from 2 to 5 July, call by our stand to chat to JEB Reviews Editors Charlotte Rutledge and Stefan Galander and pick up free JEB goodies!
The Company of Biologists provide grants to fund scientific meetings, workshops and conferences in the fields covered by our journals. Typically, meetings with fewer than 100 people may be granted up to £2,000, increasing up to £6,000 for about 400 people. The next deadline to apply is 02 September 2019.
preLights – Active behaviour during early development shapes glucocorticoid reactivity
JEB Monitoring Editor and guest preLighter Katie Gilmour highlights a preprint from Luis Castillo-Ramírez, Soojin Ryu and Rodrigo De Marco, who establish developing zebrafish as a model system to study how early-life stress modulates the function of the stress axis and stress responses later in life.