Articles

Phylogenetic relationships of the New World titi monkeys (Callicebus): first appraisal of taxonomy based on molecular evidence

Titi monkeys, Callicebus, comprise the most species-rich primate genus—34 species are currently recognised, five of them described since 2005. The lack of molecular data for titi monkeys has meant that little is ...

Authors: Hazel Byrne, Anthony B. Rylands, Jeferson C. Carneiro, Jessica W. Lynch Alfaro, Fabricio Bertuol, Maria N. F. da Silva, Mariluce Messias, Colin P. Groves, Russell A. Mittermeier, Izeni Farias, Tomas Hrbek, Horacio Schneider, Iracilda Sampaio and Jean P. Boubli

Can colour vision re-evolve? Variation in the X-linked opsin locus of cathemeral Azara’s owl monkeys (Aotus azarae azarae)

Do evolutionary specializations lead to evolutionary constraint? This appears plausible, particularly when specialization leads to loss of complex adaptations. In the owl monkey lineage, nocturnality clearly a...

Authors: N. I. Mundy, N. C. Morningstar, A. L. Baden, E. Fernandez-Duque, V. M. Dávalos and B. J. Bradley

How to build your dragon: scaling of muscle architecture from the world’s smallest to the world’s largest monitor lizard

The functional design of skeletal muscles is shaped by conflicting selective pressures between support and propulsion, which becomes even more important as animals get larger. If larger animals were geometrica...

Authors: Taylor J. M. Dick and Christofer J. Clemente

Drivers of hibernation in the brown bear

Hibernation has been a key area of research for several decades, essentially in small mammals in the laboratory, yet we know very little about what triggers or ends it in the wild. Do climatic factors, an inte...

Authors: A. L. Evans, N. J. Singh, A. Friebe, J. M. Arnemo, T. G. Laske, O. Fröbert, J. E. Swenson and S. Blanc

Geographic variation in life-history traits: growth season affects age structure, egg size and clutch size in Andrew’s toad (Bufo andrewsi)

Environmental variation associated with season length is likely to promote differentiation in life-history traits, but has been little studied in natural populations of ectotherms. We investigated patterns of ...

Authors: Wen Bo Liao, Yi Luo, Shang Ling Lou, Di Lu and Robert Jehle

Neural architecture of Galathowenia oculata Zach, 1923 (Oweniidae, Annelida)

Oweniids are marine tubeworms burrowing in muddy sediments that in current phylogenies form an early branching lineage within Annelida. Little is known about their general morphology, in particular the nervous...

Authors: Nadezhda N. Rimskaya-Korsakova, Alen Kristof, Vladimir V. Malakhov and Andreas Wanninger

Spatial compartmentalization of free radical formation and mitochondrial heterogeneity in bivalve gills revealed by live-imaging techniques

Reactive oxygen (ROS) and nitrogen (RNS) species are produced during normal unstressed metabolic activity in aerobic tissues. Most analytical work uses tissue homogenates, and lacks spatial information on the ...

Authors: Georgina A. Rivera-Ingraham, Iara Rocchetta, Ulf Bickmeyer, Stefanie Meyer and Doris Abele

Fecal sacs attract insects to the nest and provoke an activation of the immune system of nestlings

Nest sanitation is a widespread but rarely studied behavior in birds. The most common form of nest sanitation behavior, the removal of nestling feces, has focused the discussion about which selective pressures...

Authors: Juan Diego Ibáñez-Álamo, Francisco Ruiz-Raya, Laura Rodríguez and Manuel Soler

Feeding cessation alters host morphology and bacterial communities in the ascidian Pseudodistoma crucigaster

Ascidians can associate with abundant and diverse consortia of microbial symbionts, yet these communities remain unexamined for the majority of host ascidians and little is known about host-symbiont interactions.

Authors: Susanna López-Legentil, Xavier Turon and Patrick M. Erwin

The relationship of telomere length to baseline corticosterone levels in nestlings of an altricial passerine bird in natural populations

Environmental stressors increase the secretion of glucocorticoids that in turn can shorten telomeres via oxidative damage. Modification of telomere length, as a result of adversity faced early in life, can mod...

Authors: Verónica Quirici, Claudia Jimena Guerrero, Jesse S. Krause, John C. Wingfield and Rodrigo A. Vásquez

Out-of-the tropics or trans-tropical dispersal? The origins of the disjunct distribution of the gooseneck barnacle Pollicipes elegans

Studying species with disjunct distributions allows biogeographers to evaluate factors controlling species ranges, limits on gene flow, and allopatric speciation. Here, we use phylogeographic and population ge...

Authors: Sergio Marchant, Amy L. Moran and Peter B. Marko

Experimental evidence for sex-specific plasticity in adult brain

Plasticity in brain size and the size of different brain regions during early ontogeny is known from many vertebrate taxa, but less is known about plasticity in the brains of adults. In contrast to mammals and...

Authors: Gábor Herczeg, Abigél Gonda, Gergely Balázs, Kristina Noreikiene and Juha Merilä

Geographic body size variation in ectotherms: effects of seasonality on an anuran from the southern temperate forest

Body size variation has played a central role in biogeographical research, however, most studies have aimed to describe trends rather than search for underlying mechanisms. In order to provide a more comprehen...

Authors: Andrés Valenzuela-Sánchez, Andrew A. Cunningham and Claudio Soto-Azat

Intra-cellular bacterial infections affect learning and memory capacities of an invertebrate

How host manipulation by parasites evolves is fascinating but challenging evolutionary question remains. Many parasites share the capacity to manipulate host behavior increasing their transmission success. How...

Authors: Noémie Templé and Freddie-Jeanne Richard

Ultrastructural study of vitellogenesis of Ligula intestinalis (Diphyllobothriidea) reveals the presence of cytoplasmic-like cell death in cestodes

The tapeworm Ligula intestinalis (Diphyllobothriidea) is one of the most fascinating cestode parasites because it may cause parasitic castration of its second intermediate host, teleost freshwater fishes, due to ...

Authors: Aneta Yoneva, Tomáš Scholz, Daniel Młocicki and Roman Kuchta

Inferring muscular ground patterns in Bivalvia: Myogenesis in the scallop Nodipecten nodosus

Myogenesis is currently investigated in a number of invertebrate taxa using combined techniques, including fluorescence labeling, confocal microscopy, and 3D imaging, in order to understand anatomical and func...

Authors: Jorge A. Audino, José Eduardo A. R. Marian, Alen Kristof and Andreas Wanninger

Performance of single and multi-atlas based automated landmarking methods compared to expert annotations in volumetric microCT datasets of mouse mandibles

Here we present an application of advanced registration and atlas building framework DRAMMS to the automated annotation of mouse mandibles through a series of tests using single and multi-atlas segmentation pa...

Authors: Ryan Young and A. Murat Maga

Chemical cues and pheromones in the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus)

Chemical cues and pheromones guide decisions in organisms throughout the animal kingdom. The neurobiology, function, and evolution of olfaction are particularly well described in insects, and resulting concept...

Authors: Tyler J. Buchinger, Michael J. Siefkes, Barbara S. Zielinski, Cory O. Brant and Weiming Li

Young male mating success is associated with sperm number but not with male sex pheromone titres

Intraspecific communication is of crucial importance throughout the animal kingdom and may involve a combination of visual, gustatory, olfactory and acoustic cues. Variation in male sex pheromone amount and co...

Authors: Tobias Kehl, Ian A.N. Dublon and Klaus Fischer

Mandible evolution in the Scarabaeinae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) and adaptations to coprophagous habits

The astonishing spectrum of scarabaeine lifestyles makes them an attractive group for studies in entomology and evolutionary biology. As a result of adaptions to specific food substrates and textures, the mout...

Authors: Ming Bai, Sha Li, Yuanyuan Lu, Haidong Yang, Yijie Tong and Xingke Yang

Neurons of self-defence: neuronal innervation of the exocrine defence glands in stick insects

Stick insects (Phasmatodea) use repellent chemical substances (allomones) for defence which are released from so-called defence glands in the prothorax. These glands differ in size between species, and are und...

Authors: Konrad Stolz, Christoph-Rüdiger von Bredow, Yvette M. von Bredow, Reinhard Lakes-Harlan, Tina E. Trenczek and Johannes Strauß

Comparative morphology of the nervous system in three phylactolaemate bryozoans

Though some elements of the bryozoan nervous system were discovered 180 years ago, few studies of their neuromorphology have been undertaken since that time. As a result the general picture of the bryozoan ner...

Authors: Ksenia V. Shunkina, Olga V. Zaytseva, Viktor V. Starunov and Andrew N. Ostrovsky

The relationship between poison frog chemical defenses and age, body size, and sex

Amphibians secrete a wide diversity of chemicals from skin glands as defense against predators, parasites, and pathogens. Most defensive chemicals are produced endogenously through biosynthesis, but poison fro...

Authors: Adriana M. Jeckel, Ralph A. Saporito and Taran Grant

Quality of public information matters in mate-choice copying in female zebra finches

Mate-choice copying is a form of social learning in which an individual gains information about potential mates by observing conspecifics. However, it is still unknown what kind of information drives the decis...

Authors: Nina Kniel, Jennifer Schmitz and Klaudia Witte

Host sex and age influence endoparasite burdens in the gray mouse lemur

Immunosenescence (deteriorating immune function at old age) affects humans and laboratory animals, but little is known about immunosenescence in natural populations despite its potential importance for populat...

Authors: Anni Hämäläinen, Brigitte Raharivololona, Pascaline Ravoniarimbinina and Cornelia Kraus

iDNA from terrestrial haematophagous leeches as a wildlife surveying and monitoring tool – prospects, pitfalls and avenues to be developed

Invertebrate-derived DNA (iDNA) from terrestrial haematophagous leeches has recently been proposed as a powerful non-invasive tool with which to detect vertebrate species and thus to survey their populations. ...

Authors: Ida Bærholm Schnell, Rahel Sollmann, Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer, Mark E. Siddall, Douglas W. Yu, Andreas Wilting and M. Thomas. P. Gilbert

The phantoms of a high-seven - or - why do our thumbs stick out?

The earliest tetrapods had hands and feet with up to eight digits but this number was subsequently reduced during evolution. It was assumed that lineages with more than five digits no longer exist but investig...

Authors: Joost M. Woltering and Axel Meyer

Visualizing sound: counting wolves by using a spectral view of the chorus howling

Monitoring large carnivores is a central issue in conservation biology. The wolf (Canis lupus) is the most studied large carnivore in the world. After a massive decline and several local extinctions, mostly due t...

Authors: Daniela Passilongo, Luca Mattioli, Elena Bassi, László Szabó and Marco Apollonio

The relationship between defecation and feeding in nestling birds: observational and experimental evidence

Adult birds clean the nest by consuming or transporting feces, which is thought to be important in order to lower the levels of parasites, pathogens and predation at the nest. If nestlings were to defecate whe...

Authors: Rui-chang Quan, Huan Li, Bo Wang and Eben Goodale

Is a change in juvenile hormone sensitivity involved in range expansion in an invasive beetle?

It has been suggested that rapid range expansion could proceed through evolution in the endocrinological machinery controlling life-history switches. Based on this we tested whether the Colorado potato beetle, Le...

Authors: Philipp Lehmann, Anne Lyytinen, Saija Piiroinen and Leena Lindström

Hazards inherent in interdisciplinary behavioral research

Many, if not all, questions in biology and psychology today were formulated and considered in depth, though typically in a different language, from the 1700's to the early 1900's. However, because of politics ...

Authors: David Crews, Seth A Weisberg and Sahotra Sarkar

The Snark was a Boojum - reloaded

In this article, we refer to an original opinion paper written by Prof. Frank Beach in 1950 (“The Snark was a Boojum”). In his manuscript, Beach explicitly criticised the field of comparative psychology becaus...

Authors: Simone Macrì and S Helene Richter

Domestication affects the structure, development and stability of biobehavioural profiles

Domestication is an evolutionary process during which the biobehavioural profile (comprising e.g. social and emotional behaviour, cognitive abilities, as well as hormonal stress responses) is substantially res...

Authors: Sylvia Kaiser, Michael B Hennessy and Norbert Sachser

Stability and change: Stress responses and the shaping of behavioral phenotypes over the life span

In mammals, maternal signals conveyed via influences on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activity may shape behavior of the young to be better adapted for prevailing environmental conditions. However, the ...

Authors: Michael B Hennessy, Sylvia Kaiser, Tobias Tiedtke and Norbert Sachser

Lifetime development of behavioural phenotype in the house mouse (Mus musculus)

With each trajectory taken during the ontogeny of an individual, the number of optional behavioural phenotypes that can be expressed across its life span is reduced. The initial range of phenotypic plasticity ...

Authors: Vera Brust, Philipp M Schindler and Lars Lewejohann

Integrating resource defence theory with a neural nonapeptide pathway to explain territory-based mating systems

The ultimate-level factors that drive the evolution of mating systems have been well studied, but an evolutionarily conserved neural mechanism involved in shaping behaviour and social organization across speci...

Authors: Ronald G Oldfield, Rayna M Harris and Hans A Hofmann

Eco-evo-devo of the lemur syndrome: did adaptive behavioral plasticity get canalized in a large primate radiation?

Comprehensive explanations of behavioral adaptations rarely invoke all levels famously admonished by Niko Tinbergen. The role of developmental processes and plasticity, in particular, has often been neglected....

Authors: Peter M Kappeler and Claudia Fichtel

Paternal early experiences influence infant development through non-social mechanisms in Rhesus Macaques

Early experiences influence the developing organism, with lifelong and potentially adaptive consequences. It has recently become clear that the effects of early experiences are not limited to the exposed gener...

Authors: Erin L Kinnally and John P Capitanio

The maternal social environment shapes offspring growth, physiology, and behavioural phenotype in guinea pigs

Prenatal conditions influence offspring development in many species. In mammals, the effects of social density have traditionally been considered a detrimental form of maternal stress. Now their potential adap...

Authors: Nikolaus von Engelhardt, Gabriele J Kowalski and Anja Guenther

Stable individual differences in separation calls during early development in cats and mice

The development of ethologically meaningful test paradigms in young animals is an essential step in the study of the ontogeny of animal personality. Here we explore the possibility to integrate offspring separ...

Authors: Robyn Hudson, Marylin Rangassamy, Amor Saldaña, Oxána Bánszegi and Heiko G Rödel

Zebra finch males compensate in plumage ornaments at sexual maturation for a bad start in life

An individual's fitness in part depends on the characteristics of the mate so that sexually attractive ornaments, as signals of quality, are used in mate choice. Often such ornaments develop already early in l...

Authors: E Tobias Krause and Marc Naguib

Parental food provisioning is related to nestling stress response in wild great tit nestlings: implications for the development of personality

Variation in early nutrition is known to play an important role in shaping the behavioural development of individuals. Parental prey selection may have long-lasting behavioural influences. In birds foraging on...

Authors: Kees van Oers, Gregory M Kohn, Camilla A Hinde and Marc Naguib

Personality over ontogeny in zebra finches: long-term repeatable traits but unstable behavioural syndromes

A crucial assumption of animal personality research is that behaviour is consistent over time, showing a high repeatability within individuals. This assumption is often made, sometimes tested using short time ...

Authors: Yvonne Wuerz and Oliver Krüger

Behavioural phenotypes over the lifetime of a holometabolous insect

Introduction: Behavioural traits can differ considerably between individuals, and such differences were found to be consistent over the lifetime of an organism in several species. Whether behavioural traits of...

Authors: Thorben Müller and Caroline Müller

Introducing biological realism into the study of developmental plasticity in behaviour

There is increasing attention for integrating mechanistic and functional approaches to the study of (behavioural) development. As environments are mostly unstable, it is now often assumed that genetic parental...

Authors: Ton G G Groothuis and Barbara Taborsky

Effect of diet on the structure of animal personality

There is increasing interest in the proximate factors that underpin individual variation in suites of correlated behaviours. In this paper, we propose that dietary macronutrient composition, an underexplored e...

Authors: Chang S Han and Niels J Dingemanse

Plasticity as a developing trait: exploring the implications

Individual differences in plasticity have been classically framed as genotype-by-environment interactions, with different genotypes showing different reaction norms in response to environmental conditions. How...

Authors: Marco Del Giudice

Adaptive explanations for sensitive windows in development

Development in many organisms appears to show evidence of sensitive windows—periods or stages in ontogeny in which individual experience has a particularly strong influence on the phenotype (compared to other ...

Authors: Tim W Fawcett and Willem E Frankenhuis

The importance of genotype-by-age interactions for the development of repeatable behavior and correlated behaviors over lifetime

Behaviors are highly plastic and one aspect of this plasticity is behavioral changes over age. The presence of age-related plasticity in behavior opens up the possibility of between-individual variation in age...

Authors: Jon E Brommer and Barbara Class

New perspectives in behavioural development: adaptive shaping of behaviour over a lifetime?

Authors: Fritz Trillmich, Anja Günther, Caroline Müller, Klaus Reinhold and Norbert Sachser