Insects
- Responses of terrestrial polar arthropods to high and increasing temperatures
Summary: We provide an overview of current knowledge on thermal adaptation of polar terrestrial arthropods to high temperatures; large variation in upper thermal limits exists across polar regions, habitats and species.
- Dealing with predictable and unpredictable temperatures in a climate change context: the case of parasitoids and their hosts
Summary: Plasticity and bet-hedging may be adaptive strategies of hosts and parasitoids to cope with the continuum of predictable and unpredictable fluctuating temperatures in a changing climate context.
- A motion compensation treadmill for untethered wood ants (Formica rufa): evidence for transfer of orientation memories from free-walking training
Summary: We have developed and validated a motion compensating treadmill for wood ants which opens new perspectives to study insect navigation behaviour in a fully controlled manner over ecologically relevant durations.
- Different amplitudes of temperature fluctuation induce distinct transcriptomic and metabolomic responses in the dung beetle Phanaeus vindex
Highlighted Article: Dung beetles respond to temperature fluctuations in different ways depending on the amplitude of fluctuation. However, any temperature fluctuation increased transcripts associated with open chromatin structure relative to constant temperatures.
- Coding of odour and space in the hemimetabolous insect Periplaneta americana
Summary: Selective labelling of the cockroach's antennal lobe output neurons shows that odour responses are stimulus specific and concentration dependent, and preserve information on the spatial structure of the stimulus.
- A critical role for Dop1-mediated dopaminergic signaling in the plasticity of behavioral and neuronal responses to sex pheromone in a moth
Summary: Dopamine exerts its modulatory actions on the olfactory system through the Dop1 receptor and thus acts as a mediator of behavioral plasticity in insects.
- Cockroaches use diverse strategies to self-right on the ground
Summary: Comparative study of cockroach self-righting reveals performance advantages of using rotational kinetic energy to overcome the potential energy barrier and rolling more to lower it while maintaining diverse strategies.
- Celestial navigation in Drosophila
Summary: In this Review, we describe how the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, uses the position of the sun and the pattern of polarized skylight to maintain a constant heading during long-distance dispersal flights.
- How temperature influences the viscosity of hornworm hemolymph
Summary: The first quantification of insect hemolymph viscosity indicates that it shows a strong dependence on temperature at low values only (≤15°C).
- 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.