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Allee effects may arise as the number of individuals decreases, thereby reducing opportunities for cooperation and constraining individual fitness, which can lead to population decrease and extinction. Obligat...
Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is related to ecology, behaviour and life history of organisms. Rensch’s rule states that SSD increases with overall body size in species where males are the larger sex, while decr...
Sociality has evolved independently multiple times across the spider phylogeny, and despite wide taxonomic and geographical breadth the social species are characterized by a common geographical constrain to tr...
Many studies in behavioural endocrinology attempt to link territorial aggression with testosterone, but the exact relationship between testosterone and territorial behaviour is still unclear and may depend on ...
Whirligig beetles (Coleoptera: Gyrinidae) are aquatic insects living on the water surface. They are equipped with four compound eyes, an upper pair viewing above the water surface and a lower submerged pair vi...
Many animals use information acquired from recent experiences to modify their responses to new situations. Animals’ decisions in contests also depend on their previous experience: after recent victories indivi...
Patterns of biodiversity in the subterranean realm are typically different from those encountered on the Earth’s surface. The Dinaric karst of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is a global hotspot o...
Creation and use of the scientific names of animals are ruled by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Until recently, publication of new names in a work produced with ink on paper was required fo...
Insects have evolved a wide range of mechanisms to defend themselves and their offspring against antagonists. One of these strategies involves the utilization of antimicrobial compounds provided by symbiotic b...
Many mammals have evolved highly adapted hearing associated with ecological specialisation. Of these, bats possess the widest frequency range of vocalisations and associated hearing sensitivities, with frequen...
Dispersal and gene flow determine connectivity among populations, and can be studied through population genetics and phylogeography. We here review the results of such a framework for free-living marine nemato...
Social parasitism is an important selective pressure for social insect species. It is particularly the case for the hosts of dulotic (so called slave-making) ants, which pillage the brood of host colonies to i...
One central concept in evolutionary ecology is that current and residual reproductive values are negatively linked by the so-called cost of reproduction. Previous studies examining the nature of this cost sugg...
Human speech does not only communicate linguistic information but also paralinguistic features, e.g. information about the identity and the arousal state of the sender. Comparable morphological and physiologic...
Primitively eusocial halictid bees are excellent systems to study the origin of eusociality, because all individuals have retained the ancestral ability to breed independently. In the sweat bee Halictus scabiosae
Many Ophidiidae are active in dark environments and display complex sonic apparatus morphologies. However, sound recordings are scarce and little is known about acoustic communication in this family. This pape...
Traditionally, genomic or transcriptomic data have been restricted to a few model or emerging model organisms, and to a handful of species of medical and/or environmental importance. Next-generation sequencing...
Correlations between sea surface temperature (SST) and growth parameters of the solitary azooxanthellate Dendrophylliid Leptopsammia pruvoti were assessed along an 8° latitudinal gradient on western Italian coast...
We describe the tagmatization pattern of the anterior region of the extant stomatopod Erugosquilla massavensis. For documentation we used the autofluorescence capacities of the specimens, resulting in a significa...
Our purpose was to assess how pairs of sibling horseshoe bats coexists when their morphology and echolocation are almost identical. We collected data on echolocation, wing morphology, diet, and habitat use of ...
Matrotrophy or extraembryonic nutrition – transfer of nutrients from mother to embryo during gestation – is well known and thoroughly studied among vertebrates, but still poorly understood in invertebrates. Th...
Ongoing ocean warming and acidification increasingly affect marine ecosystems, in particular around the Antarctic Peninsula. Yet little is known about the capability of Antarctic notothenioid fish to cope with...
Acoels are microscopic marine worms that have become the focus of renewed debate and research due to their placement at the base of the Bilateria by molecular phylogenies. To date, Isodiametra pulchra is the most...
In the past decade neuroanatomy has proved to be a valuable source of character systems that provide insights into arthropod relationships. Since the most detailed description of dipluran brain anatomy dates b...
Gene expression in eukaryotes is regulated by histone acetylation/deacetylation, an epigenetic process mediated by histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs) whose opposing activities a...
The phenomenon of sexual conflict has been well documented, and in populations with biased operational sex ratios the consequences for the rarer sex can be severe. Females are typically a limited resource and ...
Two types of excretory systems, protonephridia and metanephridial systems are common among bilaterians. The homology of protonephridia of lophotrochozoan taxa has been widely accepted. In contrast, the homolog...
Some decades ago, biogeographers distinguished three major faunal types of high importance for Europe: (i) Mediterranean elements with exclusive glacial survival in the Mediterranean refugia, (ii) Siberian ele...
Tonsils are secondary lymphoid organs located in the naso- and oropharynx of most mammalian species. Most tonsils are characterised by crypts surrounded by dense lymphoid tissue. However, tonsils without crypt...
Aposematism is a defense system against predators consisting of the toxicity warning using conspicuous coloration. If the toxin production and aposematic coloration is costly, only individuals in good physical...
Sexual selection is a major force driving evolution and is intertwined with ecological factors. Differential allocation of limited resources has a central role in the cost of reproduction. In this paper, I rev...
The hide beetle Dermestes maculatus (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) feeds as an adult and larva on decomposing animal remains and can also be found on human corpses. Therefore, forensic entomological questions with reg...
Maternal effects occur when the phenotype of the offspring is influenced by the phenotype of the mother, which in turn depends on her heritable state as well as on influences from the current and past environm...
Gas exchangers fundamentally form by branching morphogenesis (BM), a mechanistically profoundly complex process which derives from coherent expression and regulation of multiple genes that direct cell-to-cell ...
Establishment of distinct follicle cell fates at the early stages of Drosophila oogenesis is crucial for achieving proper morphology of individual egg chambers. In Drosophila oogenesis, Notch-signaling controls p...
The differential allocation hypothesis (DAH) predicts that individuals should adjust their parental investment to their current mate’s quality. Although in principle the DAH holds for both sexes, male adjustme...
In wood-dwelling fungus-farming weevils, the so-called ambrosia beetles (Curculionidae: Scolytinae and Platypodinae), wood in the excavated tunnels is used as a medium for cultivating fungi by the combined act...
Female sperm storage has evolved independently multiple times among vertebrates to control reproduction in response to the environment. In internally fertilising amphibians, female salamanders store sperm in c...
The avian glottis channels air from the oropharynx to the trachea and is situated on an elevated structure, the laryngeal mound. It is imperative that the glottis be protected and closed during swallowing, whi...
The aim of this study was to evaluate the visual acuity of adult zebrafish by assessing the optokinetic reflex. Using a modified commercially available optomotor device (OptoMotry®), virtual three-dimensional ...
A huge diversity of marine species reproduce by synchronously spawning their gametes into the water column. Although this species-specific event typically occurs in a particular season, the precise time and da...
Many coral reef fishes undergo habitat and diet shifts during ontogeny. However, studies focusing on the physiological and morphological adaptations that may prepare them for these transitions are relatively s...
Male monogyny in the absence of paternal investment is arguably one of the most puzzling mating systems. Recent evidence suggests that males of monogynous species adjust their life-history and their mating dec...
Interest in the placing of landmarks and subsequent morphometric analyses of shape for 3D data has increased with the increasing accessibility of computed tomography (CT) scanners. However, current computer pr...
Honey bees, Apis mellifera, have a diverse community of pathogens. Previous research has mostly focused on bacterial brood diseases of high virulence, but milder diseases caused by fungal pathogens have recently ...
The transmission electron microscope (TEM) is used for the first time to study the development of book gills in the horseshoe crab. Near the end of the nineteenth century the hypothesis was presented for homol...
Osmotic stress transcriptional factor 1 (Ostf1) was firstly identified in tilapia in 2005. Then numerous studies have investigated its regulation and expression profile in fish gill tissues in related to osmor...
Inter-specific comparisons of metazoan developmental mechanisms have provided a wealth of data concerning the evolution of body form and the generation of morphological novelty. Conversely, studies of intra-sp...
As urban and rural land development become widespread features of the global landscape so an understanding of the landscape requirements of displaced and isolated wildlife species becomes increasingly importan...
Intermediate forms in the evolution of new adaptations such as transitions from water to land and the evolution of flight are often poorly understood. Similarly, the evolution of superfast sonic muscles in fis...
Frontiers in Zoology