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Europe is characterised by several high mountain systems dominating major parts of its area, and these structures have strongly influenced the evolution of taxa. For species now restricted to these high mounta...
Despite their increasing evolutionary importance, basic knowledge about the priapulid worms remains limited. In particular, priapulid development has only been partially documented. Following previous descript...
Poly- and oligophagous insects are able to feed on various host plants with a wide range of defense strategies. However, diverse food plants are also inhabited by microbiota differing in quality and quantity, ...
The European grayling (Thymallus thymallus) is a salmonid fish native to Europe, with a distribution ranging from England and France to the Ural Mountains of north-western Russia. The majority of grayling populat...
Cataglyphis fortis ants forage individually for dead arthropods in the inhospitable salt-pans of Tunisia. Locating the inconspicuous nest after a foraging run of more than 100 meters demands a remarkable orientat...
Menopause is a seemingly maladaptive life-history trait that is found in many long-lived mammals. There are two competing evolutionary hypotheses for this phenomenon; in the adaptive view of menopause, the ces...
Despite significant methodological progress, Brachiopoda remains one of the lophotrochozoan phyla for which no recent ontogenetic data employing modern methodologies such as fluorescence labelling and confocal...
Sympatric corvid species have evolved differences in nesting, habitat choice, diet and foraging. Differences in the frequency with which corvid species use their repertoire of feeding techniques is expected to...
We compared here the suitability and efficacy of traditional morphological approach and DNA barcoding to distinguish filarioid nematodes species (Nematoda, Spirurida). A reliable and rapid taxonomic identifica...
The fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera; Noctuidae) consists of two distinct strains with different host plant preferences for corn and rice. To assess whether pheromonal-mediated behavioral isolatio...
The Falkland Islands and Patagonia are traditionally assigned to the Magellan Biogeographic Province. Most marine species in Falkland waters are also reported from southern Patagonia. It remains unclear if rel...
The extraction of genetic information from preserved tissue samples or museum specimens is a fundamental component of many fields of research, including the Barcode of Life initiative, forensic investigations,...
The new animal phylogeny disrupts the traditional taxon Articulata (uniting arthropods and annelids) and thus calls into question the homology of the body segments and appendages in the two groups. Recent work...
Associations between animal species require that at least one of the species recognizes its partner. Parabioses are associations of two ant species which co-inhabit the same nest. Ants usually possess an elabo...
Ants and termites are the most abundant animals on earth. Their ecological success is attributed to their social life. They live in colonies consisting of few reproducing individuals, while the large majority ...
In order to increase the weak database concerning the organogenesis of Acoela – a clade regarded by many as the earliest extant offshoot of Bilateria and thus of particular interest for studies concerning the ...
In parent-offspring communication, vocal signals are often used to attract attention and offspring might call to induce parental behaviour. In guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus) mothers wean larger litters l...
Identification of DNA sequence diversity is a powerful means for assessing the species present in environmental samples. The most common molecular strategies for estimating taxonomic composition depend upon PC...
Eicosanoids are biologically active, oxygenated metabolites of three C20 polyunsaturated fatty acids. They act as signalling molecules within the autocrine or paracrine system in both vertebrates and invertebr...
In the Lepidoptera it was historically believed that adult butterflies rely primarily on larval-derived nutrients for reproduction and somatic maintenance. However, recent studies highlight the complex interac...
Frogs primitively have a biphasic life history with an aquatic larva (tadpole) and a usually terrestrial adult. However, direct developing frogs of the genus Eleutherodactylus have lost a free living larval stage...
During long-distance foraging in almost featureless habitats desert ants of the genus Cataglyphis employ path-integrating mechanisms (vector navigation). This navigational strategy requires an egocentric monitori...
In adult male Marcusenius pongolensis the duration of their Electric Organ Discharge (EOD) pulses increases with body size over lifetime (267 to 818 μs, field-measured). Spawning males have been observed to exhib...
The planarian Schmidtea mediterranea and the cnidarian Hydra vulgaris have emerged as valuable model organisms in regeneration and stem cell research because of their prominent ability to regenerate a complete or...
The development of specialized appendages involved in sperm transfer in the males of julid millipedes is an extreme case of specialized, complex structures differentiating in a very advanced phase of post-embr...
Foraging behaviour is an essential ecological process linking different trophic levels. A central assumption of foraging theory is that food selection maximises the fitness of the consumer. It remains unknown,...
The evolution of reproductive traits, such as hybrid incompatibility (postzygotic isolation) and species recognition (prezygotic isolation), have shown their key role in speciation. Theoretical modeling has re...
Host-parasite interactions are among the most important biotic relationships. Host species should evolve mechanisms to detect their enemies and employ appropriate counterstrategies. Parasites, in turn, should ...
The standard textbook information that annelid musculature consists of oligochaete-like outer circular and inner longitudinal muscle-layers has recently been called into question by observations of a variety o...
Recent genome sequence analysis in the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum indicated that this highly crepuscular animal encodes only two single opsin paralogs: a UV-opsin and a long wavelength (LW)-opsin; howev...
Owls are known for their silent flight. Even though there is some information available on the mechanisms that lead to a reduction of noise emission, neither the morphological basis, nor the biological mechani...
The retention of ancestral juvenile characters by adult stages of descendants is called paedomorphosis. However, this process can mislead phylogenetic analyses based on morphological data, even in combination ...
Marine cleaning interactions in which cleaner fish or shrimps remove parasites from visiting 'client' reef fish are a textbook example of mutualism. However, there is yet no conclusive evidence that cleaning o...
Accurate formal taxonomic designations are thought to be of critical importance for the conservation of endangered taxa. The Galápagos sea lion (GSL), being appreciated as a key element of the Galápagos marine...
Understanding the demographic processes underlying population dynamics is a central theme in ecology. Populations decline if losses from the population (i.e., mortality and emigration) exceed gains (i.e., recr...
The marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii (Polychaeta, Nereididae) has been recognized as a slow-evolving lophotrochozoan that attracts increasing attention as a valuable model for evolutionary and developmental r...
In simultaneous hermaphrodites with copulation and internal fertilization it is often unclear whether reciprocal sperm exchange results from the unconditional willingness of both partners to donate and receive...
Vertebrate epithelial cells typically express a specific set of keratins. In teleosts, keratins are also present in a variety of mesenchymal cells, which usually express vimentin. Significantly, our previous s...
The clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) is one of the least known cat species and depletion of their forested habitats puts it under heavy pressure. Recently reclassification of Bornean clouded leopards (N. nebul...
The Chaetognatha (arrow worms) are a group of marine carnivores whose phylogenetic relationships are still vigorously debated. Molecular studies have as yet failed to come up with a stable hypothesis on their ...
Unisexuality, or all female reproduction, is rare among vertebrates. Studying these exceptional organisms may give useful information with respect to the evolution and maintenance of sexual reproduction. Poecilia...
Desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis) are central place foragers that navigate by means of path integration. This mechanism remains accurate even on three-dimensional itineraries. In this study, we tested three hypoth...
The climatic cycles with subsequent glacial and intergalcial periods have had a great impact on the distribution and evolution of species. Using genetic analytical tools considerably increased our understandin...
Hox genes are expressed in specific domains along the anterior posterior body axis and define the regional identity. In most animals these genes are organized in a single cluster in the genome and the order of...
Flatworms are characterized by an outstanding stem cell system. These stem cells (neoblasts) can give rise to all cell types including germ cells and power the exceptional regenerative capacity of many flatwor...
DNA barcoding, i.e. the use of a 648 bp section of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase I, has recently been promoted as useful for the rapid identification and discovery of species. Its success is depende...
Social insects (ants, bees, wasps and termites) are considered as prime examples of altruism in which individuals (workers) forego their own reproduction to help other individuals reproduce. Such a behaviour i...
Identification of species via DNA sequences is the basis for DNA taxonomy and DNA barcoding. Currently there is a strong focus on using a mitochondrial marker for this purpose, in particular a fragment from th...
The Radical Pair model proposes that magnetoreception is a light-dependent process. Under low monochromatic light from the short-wavelength part of the visual spectrum, migratory birds show orientation in thei...
The lack of obvious morphological differences between species impedes the identification of species in many groups of organisms. Meanwhile, DNA-based approaches are increasingly used to survey biological diver...
Frontiers in Zoology