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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 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...
Springtails have the ability to jump using morphological structures consisting of a catapult, the furca, and a latching system constructed with interaction of the retinaculum and the dens lock. The retinaculum...
Brittle stars, unlike most other echinoderms, do not use their small tube feet for locomotion but instead use their flexible arms to produce a rowing or reverse rowing movement. They are among the fastest-movi...
Arthropods gradually change their forms through repeated molting events during postembryonic development. Anamorphosis, i.e., segment addition during postembryonic development, is seen in some arthropod lineag...
Understanding and predicting how organisms respond to human-caused environmental changes has become a major concern in conservation biology. Here, we linked gene expression and phenotypic data to identify cand...
Chicks of precocial birds hatch well-developed and can search actively for food but their homeothermy develops gradually during growth. This makes them dependent on heat provided by parents (“brooding”), which...
The original article was published in Frontiers in Zoology 2020 17:13
To facilitate background matching in heterogenous environments, some animals rapidly change body colouration. Marine predatory fishes might use this ability to hide from predators and prey. Here, we focus on s...
Endurance flight impose substantial oxidative costs on the avian oxygen delivery system. In particular, the accumulation of irreversible damage in red blood cells can reduce the capacity of blood to transport ...
Gastrointestinal (GI) functions are controlled by the enteric nervous system (ENS) in vertebrates, but data on snakes are scarce, as most studies were done in mammals. However, the feeding of many snakes, incl...
Functional diversity is important to maintain ecosystem functioning. Species with different ecomorphological traits may display distinct functional roles in ecosystems. Accordingly, functionally extreme specie...
Urban development results in habitat destruction, affecting populations of amphibians, the most fragile group of vertebrates. With changes in the environment, these animals become more exposed to light and pre...
Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain parasite infection in parental species and their hybrids. Hybrid heterosis is generally applied to explain the advantage for F1 generations of hybrids exhibitin...
Large-scale species monitoring remains a significant conservation challenge. Given the ongoing biodiversity crisis, the need for reliable and efficient methods has never been greater. Drone-based techniques ha...
Urban areas are increasing worldwide, which poses threats to animal wildlife. However, in certain cases cities can provide refuges for endangered animals. The European green toad (Bufotes viridis) is one of such ...
Molting is an important physiological process in the growth and development of arthropoda, which is mainly regulated by juvenile hormone and ecdysone. CYP302A1 is a key enzyme which plays a critical role in th...
The high-altitude-adapted frog Rana kukunoris, occurring on the Tibetan plateau, is an excellent model to study life history evolution and adaptation to harsh high-altitude environments. However, genomic resource...
The cotton mealybug Phenacoccus solenopsis Tinsley (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) is one of the most devastating sap-sucking pests of cultivated plants. The success of P. solenopsis is attributable to its ecological...
Predator avoidance can have immense impacts on fitness, yet individual variation in the expression of anti-predator behaviour remains largely unexplained. Existing research investigating learning of novel pred...
House mice are commensal animals with a nearly global distribution, structured into well differentiated local populations. Besides genetic differences between the populations, they have also diverged behaviora...
Unique genetic adaptations are present in bears of every species across the world. From (nearly) shutting down important organs during hibernation to preventing harm from lifestyles that could easily cause met...
Aeolid nudibranchs are well-known for their ability to incorporate cnidarian nematocysts and use them for defense; this process is tightly linked with the feeding preferences of molluscs. As many nudibranch gr...
Energy demand for reproduction leads to a wide diversity of foraging and life-history strategy among wild animals, linking to a common objective to maximize reproductive success. Semelparous squid species in p...
Recent technological advances opened the opportunity to simultaneously study gene expression for thousands of individual cells on a genome-wide scale. The experimental accessibility of such single-cell RNA seq...
A fascinating variety of adult body plans can be found in the Tunicates, the closest existing relatives of vertebrates. A distinctive feature of the larvacean class of pelagic tunicates is the presence of a hi...
Predicting invasiveness requires an understanding of the propensity of a given species to thrive in areas with novel ecological challenges. Evaluation of realized niche shift of an invasive species in its inva...
Portunoidea (Heterotremata) is a morphologically disparate taxon of true crabs (Brachyura) best-known for many of its representatives being considered “swimming crabs”. The term “swimming crab”, however, somet...
Sex differentiation can be viewed as a controlled regulatory balance between sex differentiation-related mRNAs and post-transcriptional mechanisms mediated by non-coding RNAs. In mammals, increasing evidence h...
Scallops are among the best-studied bivalve mollusks. However, adult nervous system and neurogenesis studies of scallops are limited. Here, we studied the localization of neurotransmitters (serotonin/5-HT, FMR...
Springtails (Hexapoda: Collembola) are tiny organisms that lead a hidden life, mostly occuring deep in the soil and on leaf litter. They have a variety of interesting body morphology patterns, the most famous ...
Division of labour (DOL) is ubiquitous across biological hierarchies. In eusocial insects, DOL is often characterized by age-related task allocation, but workers can flexibly change their tasks, allowing for D...
The radula, a chitinous membrane with embedded teeth, is one important molluscan autapomorphy. In some taxa (Polyplacophora and Patellogastropoda) one tooth type (the dominant lateral tooth) was studied intens...
Due to their cost effectiveness, ease of use, and unlimited supply, immortalized cell lines are used in place of primary cells for a wide range of research purposes, including gene function studies, CRISPR-bas...
The craniofacial skeleton is an evolutionary innovation of vertebrates. Due to its complexity and importance to protect the brain and aid in essential functions (e.g., feeding), its development requires a prec...
Frontiers in Zoology