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Life-history theory predicts that organisms trade off survival against reproduction. However, the time scales on which various consequences become evident and the physiology mediating the cost of reproduction ...
Immediate responses towards emotional utterances in humans are determined by the acoustic structure and perceived relevance, i.e. salience, of the stimuli, and are controlled via a central feedback taking into...
Malacostracan evolutionary history has seen multiple transformations of ontogenetic mode. For example direct development in connection with extensive brood care and development involving planktotrophic naupliu...
The impact of social parasites on their hosts’ fitness is a strong selective pressure that can lead to the evolution of adapted defence strategies. Guarding the nest to prevent the intrusion of parasites is a ...
The so-called ventral organs are amongst the most enigmatic structures in Onychophora (velvet worms). They were described as segmental, ectodermal thickenings in the onychophoran embryo, but the same term has ...
In the honeybee Apis mellifera, female larvae destined to become a queen are fed with royal jelly, a secretion of the hypopharyngeal glands of young nurse bees that rear the brood. The protein moiety of royal jel...
The freshwater sculpins (genus Cottus) are small, bottom-living fishes widely distributed in North America and Europe. The taxonomy of European species has remained unresolved for a long time due to the overlap o...
Due to its remarkable species diversity and micro-endemism, Madagascar has recently been suggested to serve as a biogeographic model region. However, hypothesis-based tests of various diversification mechanism...
One of the most important decisions that an animal has to make in its life is choosing a mate. Although most studies in sexual selection assume that mate choice is rational, this assumption has not been tested...
The monk parakeet (Myiopsitta monachus) is a widespread invasive species native to southern South America that has become established in many regions of the world. Monk parakeets breed in a large, fully enclosed ...
Individuals should aim to adjust their parental behaviours in order to maximize the success of their offspring but minimize associated costs. Plasticity in parental care is well documented from various bird, m...
Promiscuity is frequently used to describe animal mating behaviour, and especially to describe multiple mating by females. Yet this use of the term is incorrect, perhaps reflecting an erroneous adoption of com...
Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is widespread and variable among animals. Sexual selection, fecundity selection and ecological divergence between males and females are the major evolutionary forces of SSD. Howeve...
Regeneration is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom, but the capacity to restore damaged or missing tissue varies greatly between different phyla and even within the same phylum. However, the distant...
While a number of studies have illustrated and analyzed 3D models of inner ears in higher vertebrates, inner ears in fishes have rarely been investigated in 3D, especially with regard to the sensory epithelia ...
Multi-level fission-fusion societies, characteristic of a number of large brained mammal species including some primates, cetaceans and elephants, are among the most complex and cognitively demanding animal so...
Sound localization in small insects can be a challenging task due to physical constraints in deriving sufficiently large interaural intensity differences (IIDs) between both ears. In crickets, sound source loc...
Artificial light-at-night is known to affect a broad array of behaviours and physiological processes. In urbanized bird species, light-at-night advances important biological rhythms such as daily cycles of act...
Molecular methods of species delineation are rapidly developing and widely considered as fast and efficient means to discover species and face the 'taxonomic impediment’ in times of biodiversity crisis. So far...
To understand the evolution of acoustic communication in animals, it is important to distinguish between the structure and the usage of vocal signals, since both aspects are subject to different constraints. I...
In the past decades, many studies focused on the cell motility of apicomplexan invasive stages as they represent a potential target for chemotherapeutic intervention. Gregarines (Conoidasida, Gregarinasina) ar...
In the past decade ecological speciation has been recognized as having an important role in the diversification of plant-feeding insects. Aphids are host-specialised phytophagous insects that mate on their hos...
Many scientific disciplines rely on correct taxon delineations and identifications. So does a great part of the general public as well as decision makers. Researchers, students and enthusiastic amateurs often ...
The great majority of afferent neurons of insect legs project into their segmental ganglion. Intersegmental projections are rare and are only formed by sense organs associated with the basal joints of the legs...
Traditionally, the origin of the third germ layer and its special formation of coelomic cavities by enterocoely is regarded to be an informative character in phylogenetic analyses. In early deuterostomes such ...
In Annelida two types of photoreceptor cells (PRCs) are regarded as generally present, rhabdomeric and ciliary PRCs. In certain taxa, however, an additional type of PRC may occur, the so called phaosomal PRC. ...
Regulation of pH homeostasis is a central feature of all animals to cope with acid–base disturbances caused by respiratory CO2. Although a large body of knowledge is available for vertebrate and mammalian pH regu...
A mother carries her young in many altricial mammals, such as cats, lions, rats and mice. During maternal carrying, the transported young assume a compact posture. We have recently shown that, in both humans a...
Warning calls are a widespread anti-predator adaptation, which can signal unprofitability to predators or alert other potential targets of the predator. Although it is tacitly assumed that the recipients of wa...
The Vespertilionidae is the largest family of bats, characterized by high occurrence of morphologically convergent groups, which impedes the study of their evolutionary history. The situation is even more comp...
The nemertean pilidium is a long-lived feeding larva unique to the life cycle of a single monophyletic group, the Pilidiophora, which is characterized by this innovation. That the pilidium feeds on small plank...
In mammals, internal Na+ homeostasis is maintained through Na+ reabsorption via a variety of Na+ transport proteins with mutually compensating functions, which are expressed in different segments of the nephrons....
Invertebrate communities are central to many environmental monitoring programs. In freshwater ecosystems, aquatic macroinvertebrates are collected, identified and then used to infer ecosystem condition. Yet th...
In biomedical research, a huge variety of different techniques is currently available for the structural examination of small specimens, including conventional light microscopy (LM), transmission electron micr...
Allelic incompatibility between individuals of the same species should select for mate choice based on the genetic make-up of both partners at loci that influence offspring fitness. As a consequence, mate choi...
Intra-specific variation in melanocyte pigmentation, common in the animal kingdom, has caught the eye of naturalists and biologists for centuries. In vertebrates, dark, eumelanin pigmentation is often genetica...
The primate visual system has a uniquely high proportion of ipsilateral retinal projections, retinal ganglial cells that do not cross the midline in the optic chiasm. The general assumption is that this develo...
Despite ongoing interest in the neurophysiology of visual systems in scorpions, aspects of their neuroanatomy have received little attention. Lately sets of neuroanatomical characters have contributed importan...
Terrestrial top-predators are expected to regulate and stabilise food webs through their consumptive and non-consumptive effects on sympatric mesopredators and prey. The lethal control of top-predators has the...
Landing flight in birds is demanding on visual control of velocity, distance to target, and slope of descent. Birds flying in flocks must also keep a common course of landing in order to avoid collisions. Wher...
Gastropods are among the most diverse animal clades, and have successfully colonized special habitats such as the marine sand interstitial. Specialized meiofaunal snails and slugs are tiny and worm-shaped. The...
Ecological constraints related to foraging are expected to affect the evolution of morphological traits relevant to food capture, manipulation and transport. Females of central-place foraging Hymenoptera vary ...
One of the most interesting riddles within crustaceans is the origin of Cladocera (water fleas). Cladocerans are morphologically diverse and in terms of size and body segmentation differ considerably from othe...
The PCR-based analysis of homologous genes has become one of the most powerful approaches for species detection and identification, particularly with the recent availability of Next Generation Sequencing platf...
In contrast to mammalian erythrocytes, which have lost their nucleus and mitochondria during maturation, the erythrocytes of almost all other vertebrate species are nucleated throughout their lifespan. Little ...
Parasitic, commensalistic, and mutualistic guests in social insect colonies often circumvent their hosts’ nestmate recognition system to be accepted. These tolerance strategies include chemical mimicry and che...
Nemertea is one of the least studied lophotrochozoan phyla concerning neurogenesis. The sparse data available do not unambiguously allow for answering questions with respect to the neural groundplan of the phy...
Risk assessment occurs over different temporal and spatial scales and is selected for when individuals show an adaptive response to a threat. Here, we test if birds respond to the threat of brood parasitism us...
Females have often been shown to exhibit preferences for certain male traits. However, little is known about behavioural rules females use when searching for mates in their natural habitat. We investigated mat...
Ancient DNA has revolutionized conservation genetic studies as it allows monitoring of the genetic variability of species through time and predicting the impact of ecosystems’ threats on future population dyna...
Frontiers in Zoology