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Toe fringes are a key innovation for sand dwelling lizards, and the relationship between toe fringe function and substrate properties is helpful in understanding the adaptation of lizards to sand dune environm...
Rapidly expanding human activities have profoundly changed the habitat use of both large carnivores and their prey, but whether and how human activities affect the interactions between them has received relati...
Regenerating legs is advantageous for arthropods as their appendages exhibit crucial functional specializations. Many arthropods possess a ‘preferred breakage point’, where the appendage is most likely to brea...
Drumming is a non-vocal auditory display producing airborne as well as seismic vibrations by tapping body extremities on a surface. It is mostly described as an alarm signal but is also discussed to signal dom...
Centipedes are terrestrial and predatory arthropods that possess an evolutionary transformed pair of appendages used for venom injection—the forcipules. Many arthropods incorporate reinforcing elements into th...
The conservation of aquatic and semiaquatic turtles requires knowledge of the area and vegetation structure of habitat used for nesting, and nesting migration route. We aimed to survey the effects of habitat f...
Research into the hunting behavior in members of the Cricetidae family offers an opportunity to reveal what changes in the predatory behavioral sequences occur when a rodent species shifts from an omnivorous t...
The original article was published in Frontiers in Zoology 2023 20:38
Many questions in biology benefit greatly from the use of a variety of model systems. High-throughput sequencing methods have been a triumph in the democratization of diverse model systems. They allow for the ...
Parental care benefits offspring but comes with costs. To optimize the trade-off of costs and benefits, parents should adjust care based on intrinsic and/or extrinsic conditions. The harm to offspring hypothes...
The most extraordinary systems of symbiosis in insects are found in the suborder Auchenorrhyncha of Hemiptera, which provide unique perspectives for uncovering complicated insect-microbe symbiosis. We investig...
The investigation of the effects of artificial 50 Hz electric field (E-field) frequency on Apis mellifera is a relatively new field of research. Since the current literature focuses mainly on short-term effects, ...
Various morphological adaptations are associated with symbiotic relationships between organisms. One such adaptation is seen in the nemertean genus Malacobdella. All species in the genus are commensals of mollusc...
Energy and time allocation in seabirds differ between consecutive stages of breeding given various requirements of particular phases of the reproductive period. Theses allocations may also be sex-specific cons...
Anuran metamorphosis, which is driven by thyroid hormone (TH)-mediated processes, orchestrates intricate morphological and functional transformations for the transition from aquatic tadpoles to terrestrial lif...
Rapid identification and classification of bats are critical for practical applications. However, species identification of bats is a typically detrimental and time-consuming manual task that depends on taxono...
A comprehensive understanding of the dietary habits of carnivores is essential to get ecological insights into their role in the ecosystem, potential competition with other carnivorous species, and their effec...
The recent combination of genomics and single cell transcriptomics has allowed to assess a variety of non-conventional model organisms in much more depth. Single cell transcriptomes can uncover hidden cellular...
The original article was published in Frontiers in Zoology 2023 20:31
One of the most peculiar groups of the mostly colonial phylum Bryozoa is the taxon Monobryozoon, whose name already implies non-colonial members of the phylum. Its peculiarity and highly unusual lifestyle as a me...
Proper adjustments of metabolic thermogenesis play an important role in thermoregulation in endotherm to cope with cold and/or warm ambient temperatures, however its roles in energy balance and fat accumulatio...
Recent climate changes have produced extreme climate events. This study focused on extreme snowfall and intended to discuss the vulnerability of temperate mammals against it through interspecies comparisons of...
Early during onychophoran development and prior to the formation of the germ band, a posterior tissue thickening forms the posterior pit. Anterior to this thickening forms a groove, the embryonic slit, that...
Modern integrative taxonomy-based annelid species descriptions are detailed combining morphological data and, since the last decades, also molecular information. Historic species descriptions are often compara...
As an important catecholamine neurotransmitter in invertebrates and vertebrates, dopamine plays multiple roles in the life of the honey bee. Dopamine receptors (DA), which specifically bind to dopamine to acti...
Appendicularia consists of approximately 70 purely marine species that belong to Tunicata the probable sister taxon to Craniota. Therefore, Appendicularia plays a pivotal role for our understanding of chordate...
Studies have demonstrated that the sounds of animals from many taxa with nonlinear phenomena (NLP)—caused by nonlinear characteristics of vocal organ dynamics that lead to nonlinear vocal phenomena—can influen...
Experts use knowledge to infer the distribution of species based on fuzzy logical assumptions about the relationship between species and the environment. Thus, expert knowledge is amenable to fuzzy logic model...
The Correction to this article has been published in Frontiers in Zoology 2024 21:18
Suckermouth armoured catfish (Loricariidae) are a highly speciose and diverse freshwater fish family, which bear upper and lower lips forming an oral disc. Its hierarchical organisation allows the attachment t...
The common bedbug Cimex lectularius is a widespread ectoparasite on humans and bats. Two genetically isolated lineages, parasitizing either human (HL) or bat (BL) hosts, have been suggested to differentiate becau...
Extreme environmental conditions at high altitude, such as hypobaric hypoxia, low temperature, and strong UV radiation, pose a great challenge to the survival of animals. Although the mechanisms of adaptation ...
Play is a common and developmentally important behaviour in young mammals. Specifically in Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus), reduced opportunity to engage in rough-and-tumble (RT) play has been associated with imp...
A particular type of site fidelity is faithfulness to the nest site, where birds are not only reoccupying breeding territories but also reusing nests built in previous breeding seasons. Staying faithful to the...
The development, maintenance, and use of immune defences are costly. Therefore, animals face trade-offs in terms of resource allocation within their immune system and between their immune system and other phys...
The African Great Lakes have long been recognized as an excellent location to study speciation. Most famously, cichlid fishes have radiated in Lake Tanganyika and subsequently spread into Lake Malawi and Lake ...
The Correction to this article has been published in Frontiers in Zoology 2024 21:6
The classic optimal foraging theory (OFT) predicts animals’ food patch use assuming that individuals in a population use the same strategy while foraging. However, due to the existence of animal personality, i...
For decoding the mechanism of how cells and organs function information on their ultrastructure is essential. High-resolution 3D imaging has revolutionized morphology. Serial block face scanning electron micro...
Third-party interference in agonistic contests entails a deliberate intervention in an ongoing fight by a bystanding individual (third party) and may be followed by post-conflict social behaviour to provide su...
Despite centuries of research, debate remains on the scaling of metabolic rate to mass especially for intraspecific cases. The high variation of body mass within brown bears presents a unique opportunity to st...
Various chalcidoid wasps can actively steer their terebra (= ovipositor shaft) in diverse directions, despite the lack of terebral intrinsic musculature. To investigate the mechanisms of these bending and rota...
Understanding how many mates an animal has in its lifetime is a critical factor in sexual selection. At the same time, differences in an organism's ecology, such as the quantity and quality of food, could be r...
Meteorological stressors (e.g., temperature and rain shortage) constrain brood provisioning in some bird species, but the consequences on reproductive success have been rarely quantified. Here we show, in a co...
Bats are increasingly being recognized as important hosts for viruses, some of which are zoonotic and carry the potential for spillover within human and livestock populations. Biosurveillance studies focused o...
The process of copulation in Lepidoptera is understudied and poorly understood from a functional perspective. The purpose of the present paper is to study the interaction of the male and female genitalia of Tortr...
Parotoid gland secretion of bufonid toads is a rich source of toxic molecules that are used against predators, parasites and pathogens. Bufadienolides and biogenic amines are the principal compounds responsibl...
There is need of information on ecological interactions that keystone species such as apex predators establish in ecosystems recently recolonised. Interactions among carnivore species have the potential to inf...
Torpor is an energy saving strategy achieved by substantial reductions of metabolic rate and body temperature that enables animals to survive periods of low resource availability. During hibernation (multiday ...
The current modification of species distribution ranges, as a response to a warmer climate, constitutes an interesting line of work and a recent challenge for biogeography. This study aimed to determine if the...
Understanding predator–prey relationships is fundamental in many areas of ecology and conservation. In reptiles, basking time often increases the risk of predation and one way to minimise this risk is to reduc...
Frontiers in Zoology