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
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
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
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
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...
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
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
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...
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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...
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
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
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
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S21
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S20
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S19
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S18
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S17
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S16
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S15
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S14
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S13
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S12
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S11
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
Citation:Frontiers in Zoology
2015
12(Suppl 1):S10
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 ...
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...
Behavior of wild vertebrate individuals can vary in response to environmental or social factors. Such within-individual behavioral variation is often mediated by hormonal mechanisms. Hormones also serve as a b...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
Carbonic anhydrases (CAs, EC 4.2.1.1) are ubiquitous enzymes that catalyze the reversible hydration reaction of carbon dioxide. CAs are present as six structurally divergent enzyme families: α, β, γ, δ, ζ and ...
Authors: Leo Syrjänen, Susanna Valanne, Marianne Kuuslahti, Tea Tuomela, Ashwin Sriram, Alberto Sanz, Howard T. Jacobs, Mika Rämet and Seppo Parkkila
‘Motion dazzle’ refers to the hypothesis that high contrast patterns such as stripes and zigzags may have evolved in a wide range of animals as they make it difficult to judge the trajectory of an animal in mo...
Authors: Anna E. Hughes, Richard S. Magor-Elliott and Martin Stevens
Predator-induced defences are a prominent example of phenotypic plasticity found from single-celled organisms to vertebrates. The water flea Daphnia pulex is a very convenient ecological genomic model for studyin...
Authors: Andrey Rozenberg, Mrutyunjaya Parida, Florian Leese, Linda C. Weiss, Ralph Tollrian and J. Robert Manak
Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) constitute one of the most diverse insect orders, and play an important role in ecosystem function. However, little is known in terms of their bacterial communities. Wolbachia,...
Authors: Muhammad Z. Ahmed, Eli V. Araujo-Jnr, John J. Welch and Akito Y. Kawahara
Reconstructing the evolutionary history of nervous systems requires an understanding of their architecture and development across diverse taxa. The spiralians encompass diverse body plans and organ systems, an...
Authors: Néva P Meyer, Allan Carrillo-Baltodano, Richard E Moore and Elaine C Seaver
RNA interference (RNAi) of trait-specific genes permits the manipulation of specific phenotypic traits (“phenotypic engineering”) and thus represents a powerful tool to test trait function in evolutionary stud...
Authors: Roberto Arbore, Kiyono Sekii, Christian Beisel, Peter Ladurner, Eugene Berezikov and Lukas Schärer
The ‘scaly-foot gastropod’ (Chrysomallon squamiferum Chen et al., 2015) from deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems of the Indian Ocean is an active mobile gastropod occurring in locally high densities, and it is ...
Authors: Chong Chen, Jonathan T. Copley, Katrin Linse, Alex D. Rogers and Julia D. Sigwart
The wider availability of non-destructive and high-resolution methods, such as micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), has prompted its use in anatomical and morphometric studies. Yet, because of the actual scan...
Authors: Monique Nouailhetas Simon and Gabriel Marroig
