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Captive facilities such as zoos are uniquely instrumental in conservation efforts. To fulfill their potential as bastions for conservation, zoos must preserve captive populations as appropriate proxies for the...
Why a variety of social animals emit foraging-associated calls during group foraging remains an open question. These vocalizations may be used to recruit conspecifics to food patches (i.e. food advertisement h...
The rutting vocal display of male impala Aepyceros melampus is unique for its complexity among ruminants. This study investigates bouts of rutting calls produced towards potential mates and rival males by free-ra...
Condition indices (CIs) are used in ecological studies as a way of measuring an individual animal’s health and fitness. Noninvasive CIs are estimations of a relative score of fat content or rely on a ratio of ...
The Chinese monal (Lophophorus lhuysii) is an endangered bird species, with a wild population restricted to the mountains in southwest China, and only one known captive population in the world. We investigated th...
In small hibernators, global downregulation of the endocannabinoid system (ECS), which is involved in modulating neuronal signaling, feeding behavior, energy metabolism, and circannual rhythms, has been report...
The feeding apparatus of salamanders consists mainly of the cranium, mandible, teeth, hyobranchial apparatus and the muscles of the cranial region. The morphology of the feeding apparatus in turn determines th...
Explanations for the ecological dominance of ants generally focus on the benefits of division of labour and cooperation during foraging. However, the principal innovation of ants relative to their wasp ancesto...
Fitness is strongly related to locomotor performance, which can determine success in foraging, mating, and other critical activities. Locomotor performance on different substrates is likely to require differen...
The initiation of desert conditions in the Tarim Basin in China since the late Miocene has led to the significant genetic structuring of local organisms. Tarim Red Deer (Cervus elaphus yarkandensis, TRD) have ada...
Metamorphic climax is the crucial stage of amphibian metamorphosis responsible for the morphological and functional changes necessary for transition to a terrestrial habitat. This developmental period is sensi...
Growth trajectories should be adapted to selective factors of each species’ environment. However, major shaping forces of growth and development are unclear, especially when studying several traits at once. Bi...
Despite the diverse morphology of the adult squamate naso-palatal complex – consisting of the nasal cavity, vomeronasal organ (VNO), choanal groove, lacrimal duct and superficial palate – little is known about...
Understanding how wild species respond to novel situations with associated risk can provide valuable insights for inter-specific behavioral variation and associations with pace-of-life (POL). Rodents, a global...
Behaviour during hibernation contributes to energy conservation in winter. Hibernating bats select roosts with respect to physiological and environmental stressors, available local microclimate and species-spe...
Temperature affects many aspects of performance in poikilotherms, including how prey respond when encountering predators. Studies of anti-predator responses in fish mainly have focused on behaviour, whereas ph...
Morphological novelties have been acquired through evolutionary processes and related to the adaptation of new life-history strategies with new functions of the bodyparts. Cephalopod molluscs such as octopuses...
Invasive species are of substantial concern because they may threaten ecosystem stability and biodiversity worldwide. Not surprisingly, studies examining the drivers of biological invasion have increased in nu...
Identifying the factors that contribute to divergence among populations in mate preferences is important for understanding of the manner in which premating reproductive isolation might arise and how this isola...
The gut is the major organ for nutrient absorption and immune response in the body of animals. Although effects of fasting on the gut functions have been extensively studied in model animals (e.g. mice), littl...
The ground pattern underlying the nervous system of the last common ancestor in annelids was long thought to be settled, consisting of a dorsal brain, circumoesophageal connectives and a subepithelial, ladder-...
Ascidians (phylum Chordata, class Ascidiacea) represent the closest living invertebrate relatives of the vertebrates and constitute an important model for studying the evolution of chordate development. The so...
With more than 30,000 species, teleosts comprise about half of today’s living vertebrates, enriched with a wide set of adaptations to all aquatic systems. Their evolution was marked by modifications of their t...
Using Froude numbers (Fr) and relative stride length (stride length: hip height), trackways have been widely used to determine the speed and gait of an animal. This approach, however, is limited by the ability to...
The “German Darwin” Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a key figure during the first “Darwinian revolution“, a time when the foundations of the modern evolutionary theory were laid. It was Haeckel, who crucially co...
Sirtuins (SIRTs) are master regulators of metabolism, and their expression patterns in gilthead sea bream (GSB) reveal different tissue metabolic capabilities and changes in energy status. Since little is know...
Obligate brood parasites exert strong selective pressure on target hosts. In response, hosts typically evolve anti-parasitism strategies, of which egg recognition is one of the most efficient. Generally, host ...
Non-native species are often introduced in cities, where they take advantage of microclimatic conditions, resources provided by humans, and competitor/predator release to establish and proliferate. However, na...
The chemosymbiotic gastropod Alviniconcha (Provannidae), first described in 1988, is one of the most emblematic hydrothermal-vent taxa described from the Central Indian Ridge and the Southwest (SW) Pacific. Symbi...
Sturgeons (Acipenseriformes) are polyploid chondrostean fish that constitute an important model species for studying development and evolution in vertebrates. To better understand the mechanisms of reproductio...
Courtship vocalizations are used by males of many species to attract and influence the behavior of potential mating partners. Our aim here was to investigate the modulation and reproductive consequences of cou...
Severe hypoxia induces a series of stress responses in mammals; however, subterranean rodents have evolved several adaptation mechanisms of energy metabolisms and O2 utilization for hypoxia. Mammalian brains show...
Genetic and ecological factors influence morphology, and morphology is compatible with function. The morphology and bite performance of skulls of bats show a number of characteristic feeding adaptations. The g...
Research of many mammal species tends to focus on single habitats, reducing knowledge of ecological flexibility. The Javan lutung (Trachypithecus auratus) is considered a strict forest primate, and little is know...
For nearly a decade, the metazoan-focused research community has explored the impacts of ocean acidification (OA) on marine animals, noting that changes in ocean chemistry can impact calcification, metabolism,...
The astonishing variety of sounds that birds can produce has been the subject of many studies aiming to identify the underlying anatomical and physical mechanisms of sound production. An interesting feature of...
Pleuropodia are limb-derived glandular organs that transiently appear on the first abdominal segment in embryos of insects from majority of “orders”. They are missing in the genetic model Drosophila and little is...
Amphibians are one of the most susceptible groups to climate change as their development occurs in aquatic environments or in microhabitats with high humidity. Accordingly, our primary objective was to investi...
In animals with altricial offspring, most growth occurs after birth and may be optimized by post-natal maternal care. Maternal effects on growth may be influenced by individual characteristics of the mothers, ...
The apical organ is the most prominent neural structure in spiralian larvae. Although it has been thoroughly investigated in larvae of the class Pilidiophora in phylum Nemertea, studies on its structure in oth...
The geometric patterns that adorn the shells of many phylogenetically disparate molluscan species are comprised of pigments that span the visible spectrum. Although early chemical studies implicated melanin as...
Brachyuran crabs can effectively modulate cardiac stroke volume independently of heart rate in response to abiotic drivers. Non-invasive techniques can help to improve the understanding of cardiac performance ...
Acoustic signals are used by many animals to transmit information. Variation in the acoustic characteristics of these signals often covaries with morphology and can relay information about an individual’s fitn...
White-nose Syndrome (WNS) is a mycosis caused by a cutaneous infection with the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd). It produces hibernation mortality rates of 75–98% in 4 bats: Myotis lucifugus, M. septentr...
The origin of birds is marked by a significant decrease in body size along with an increase in relative forelimb size. However, before the evolution of flight, both traits may have already been related: It has...
Social isolation, i.e., the deprivation of social contact, is a highly stressful circumstance that affects behavioral and functional brain development in social animals. Cognitive flexibility, one of the essen...
Fat storage is required for the life cycle of many organisms. The primary fat depot for most vertebrates is white adipose tissue. However, in primitive vertebrates (e.g., agnathan group and elasmobranchs), the...
Within-species skull shape variation of marsupial mammals is widely considered low and strongly size-dependent (allometric), possibly due to developmental constraints arising from the altricial birth of marsup...
Nervous tissue is an inherent component of the many specialized genital structures for transferring sperm directly into the female’s body. However, the male copulatory organ of spiders was considered a puzzlin...
In contrast to traditional models of purifying selection and a single aposematic signal in Müllerian complexes, some communities of unprofitable prey contain members with multiple aposematic patterns. Processe...
Frontiers in Zoology