predation
- Predator chemical cues decrease attack time and increase metabolic rate in an orb-web spider
Summary: Female orb-web spiders, Argiope keyserlingi, elevate their metabolic rate under the risk of predation, allowing them to respond quicker and spend less time on foraging, reducing their exposure to predators.
- Food mobility and the evolution of grasping behaviour: a case study in strepsirrhine primates
Summary: The frequency of hand grasping across 17 strepsirrhine species increases with a swinging motion of the food, clarifying the role of food mobility in the evolution of grasping hands in primates.
- Motion-in-depth perception and prey capture in the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola
Summary: Both stereoscopic visual cues and changing luminance cues can enable detection of approaching objects. We show that mantises use looming rather than stereo cues to detect motion-in-depth.
- Predatory posture and performance in a precocious larval fish targeting evasive copepods
Highlighted Article: Investigation of a highly modified and previously undescribed fast-start of a larval coral-reef fish, which captures evasive copepod prey as early as 1 day after hatching.
- Specialized movement and laterality of fin-biting behaviour in Genyochromis mento in Lake Malawi
Summary: Fin-biting cichlids in Lake Malawi exhibit a lateralized preference for side of attack. Predatory fish aiming for prey that show escape behaviours may frequently present lateralized behaviour in predation.
- Should I stay or should I go? The settlement-inducing protein complex guides barnacle settlement decisions
Summary: Reminiscent of field observations on Balanus balanoides by D. Crisp, F.R.S. in 1961, Amphibalanus amphitrite cyprids behave dose-dependently to the presence of their settlement-inducing protein complex in laboratory conditions.
- The insensitive dormouse: reproduction skipping is not caused by chronic stress in Glis glis
Highlighted Article: Variation in tree seeding leads to pronounced differences in fecal glucocorticoid metabolite levels in dormice, but the downregulation of reproductive function in mast-failure years is not caused by stress.
- Context-dependent behavioural lateralization in the European pond turtle, Emys orbicularis (Testudines, Emydidae)
Summary: Laterality for escape behaviour is modulated by environmental context, leading to possible unexplored relationships for behavioural responses, above all in reptiles, in which brain lateralization is still poorly investigated.
- The low-down on sleeping down low: pigeons shift to lighter forms of sleep when sleeping near the ground
Highlighted Article: Birds decrease REM sleep in a similar manner to mammals when sleeping under conditions of higher perceived predation risk.
- Scaling of morphology and ultrastructure of hearts among wild African antelope
Summary: Wild African antelope show proportionality between capillary and mitochondrial investments of the heart, indicating economy of design at the cellular level of the oxygen cascade in an aerobic organ.