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
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.
Editors’ choice – Parental stressor exposure simultaneously conveys both adaptive and maladaptive larval phenotypes through epigenetic inheritance in the zebrafish (Danio rerio)
An oil spill is never a good thing, but Naim Bautista and Warren Burggren have shown that zebrafish can pass on resistance to the damaging effects of an oil-spiked diet to their offspring.
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!
The Company of Biologists provides 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 28 November 2019.
preLights – preLights reaches 500 posts!
The success of preLights is down to the hard work of our preLighters. Head over to the preLights website to find out more about our most active early-career-researchers.