stress
- Rapid cold hardening protects against sublethal freezing injury in an Antarctic insect
Summary: Rapid cold hardening has a well-established role in preventing death from cold; present data show it also protects against non-lethal freezing injury in a freeze-tolerant Antarctic insect.
- Strain transformation: enhancement of invertebrate memory in a new rearing environment
Summary: A change in rearing environment results in the establishment of a lab-bred Lymnaea stagnalis strain with an enhanced ability to form memory as well as heightened resilience to physiological stressors.
- Repeated stimulation of the pituitary–adrenal axis alters offspring phenotype of a wild passerine
Summary: Developmental stress has negative effects on pied flycatcher offspring growth and physiology, but may have short-term benefits on performance by enhancing antipredator behaviour.
- Do arthropods feel anxious during molts?
Highlighted Article: Molts impose developmental stress in crayfish, under the control of ecdysteroids, and cause transient light-avoidance behavior that has features characteristic of anxiety.
- An attempt to select non-genetic variation in resistance to starvation and reduced chill coma recovery time in Drosophila melanogaster
Summary: An artificial selection experiment using D. melanogaster inbred lines to test for non-genetic inheritance that could be selected revealed a weak response to selection in the inbred and outbred lines, with variability across lines.
- Deciphering function of the pulmonary arterial sphincters in loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta)
Summary: The pulmonary artery sphincter allows sea turtles to manage pulmonary perfusion during diving, but this may become a liability during stress at depth, which may increase inert gas uptake resulting in gas emboli.
- Evidence of embryonic regulation of maternally derived yolk corticosterone
Summary: Embryos are capable of metabolizing maternally derived yolk corticosterone to minimize exposure during development and to avoid deleterious effects on phenotype and survival.
- Individual differences in heart rate reveal a broad range of autonomic phenotypes in a free-living seabird population
Summary: Streaked shearwaters show consistent individual differences in autonomic activity that persist even across years and are driven by individual differences in parasympathetic ‘rest-and-digest’ activity, not sympathetic ‘fight-or-flight’ activity.
- The effect of chronic and acute stressors, and their interaction, on testes function: an experimental test during testicular recrudescence
Summary: Exposure to an acute stressor downregulated testosterone production, but this effect was absent in chronically disturbed birds. The acute stressor had a strong effect on the testicular transcriptome, whereas chronic disturbance had a negligible effect.
- Circadian rhythms and environmental disturbances – underexplored interactions
Summary: Human-induced changes in temperature, chemical discharge, eutrophication of water and the associated depletion of oxygen may disrupt the integration between circadian rhythms and other functions in animals. This possibility should be considered more thoroughly in studies addressing the environmental responses of animals.