Insects
- 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.
- Intricate but tight coupling of spiracular activity and abdominal ventilation during locust discontinuous gas exchange cycles
Editors' Choice: Direct monitoring of ventilation/spiracle muscle activity, simultaneously with respirometry, reveals two different ventilation motor patterns that could explain the mechanistic basis of discontinuous gas exchange cycles in locusts.
- Studying emotion in invertebrates: what has been done, what can be measured and what they can provide
Summary: Recent work has adapted methods for assessing emotions in humans and other animals, to invertebrates, with intriguing results. This Review interprets and discusses their utility with respect to the evolution and neurobiology of emotion.
- Mass scaling of metabolic rates in carabid beetles (Carabidae) – the importance of phylogeny, regression models and gas exchange patterns
Summary: The relationship between metabolic rate and body mass in insects can depend heavily on the model-fitting method, the structure of phylogeny and ecological factors.
- Cranking up the heat: relationships between energetically costly song features and the increase in thorax temperature in male crickets and katydids
Summary: A comparative analysis assessing the physiological costs insects incur by singing as an aspect of a trade-off that influences an individual's fitness and life history.