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Thaliaceans is one of the understudied classes of the phylum Tunicata. In particular, their phylogenetic relationships remain an issue of debate. The overall pattern of serotonin (5-HT) distribution is an exce...
Orangutans have one of the slowest-paced life histories of all mammals. Whereas life-history theory suggests that the time to reach adulthood is constrained by the time needed to reach adult body size, the nee...
The Correction to this article has been published in Frontiers in Zoology 2018 15:2
Most biological functions are synchronized to the environmental light:dark cycle via a circadian timekeeping system. Bears exhibit shallow torpor combined with metabolic suppression during winter dormancy. We ...
Photoreceptors have evolved numerous times giving organisms the ability to detect light and respond to specific visual stimuli. Studies into the visual abilities of the Asteroidea (Echinodermata) have recently...
Understanding the role of avian vocal communication in social organisation requires knowledge of the vocal repertoire used to convey information. Parrots use acoustic signals in a variety of social contexts, b...
The minute, finely-tuned ear ossicles of mammals arose through a spectacular evolutionary transformation from their origins as a load-bearing jaw joint. This involved detachment from the postdentary trough of ...
The amount of resources provided by the mother before birth has important and long-lasting effects on offspring fitness. Despite this, there is a large amount of variation in maternal investment seen in natura...
Information on larval diet of many holometabolous insects remains incomplete. Carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) stable isotope analysis in adult wing tissue can provide an efficient tool to infer such trophic relati...
Ultrastructures in butterfly wing scales can take many shapes, resulting in the often striking coloration of many butterflies due to interference of light. The plethora of coloration mechanisms is dazzling, bu...
Determination of the embryonic body axes is a crucial developmental process in all animals. The establishment of the embryonic axes of spiders has been best studied in the common-house-spider Parasteatoda tepidar...
Assessing the range and territories of wild mammals traditionally requires years of data collection and often involves directly following individuals or using tracking devices. Indirect and non-invasive method...
Dewlaps are iconic features of several ungulate species and, although a role in signalling has been postulated, their function remains largely unexplored. We recently failed to find any age-independent link be...
In most mammals, lactating mothers dramatically increase their food intake after parturition and reach a peak intake rate after a certain time while their offspring continue to grow. A common view, perpetuated...
As increasingly fragmented and isolated populations of threatened species become subjected to climate change, invasive species and other stressors, there is an urgent need to consider adaptive potential when m...
Morphological characters of birds reflect their adaptive evolution and ecological requirements and are also relevant to phylogenetic relationships within a group of related species. The tits (Paridae) are know...
The flight patterns of albatrosses and shearwaters have become a touchstone for much of Lévy flight research, spawning an extensive field of enquiry. There is now compelling evidence that the flight patterns o...
Bitter taste perception is essential for species with selective food intake, enabling them to avoid unpalatable or toxic items. Previous studies noted a marked variation in the number of TAS2R genes among various...
The swimming activity of sea urchin larvae is dependent on the ciliary band (CB) on the larval surface and is regulated by several neurotransmitters, including serotonin (5HT), dopamine, and γ-aminobutyric aci...
Innovative new techniques that aid in the visualization of microscopic anatomical structures have improved our understanding of organismal biology significantly. It is often challenging to observe internal 3D ...
Through the actions of one or more isoforms of the enzyme 5α-reductase in many male reproductive tissues, circulating testosterone (T) undergoes metabolic conversion into 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which bi...
Species-specific strategies for financing the costs of reproduction are well understood, forming a continuum ranging from high to low reliance on stored nutrients. Animals relying mostly on stored reserves are...
An external skeleton is an essential part of the body plan of many animals and is thought to be one of the key factors that enabled the great expansion in animal diversity and disparity during the Cambrian exp...
The expression of animal personality is indicated by patterns of consistency in individual behaviour. Often, the differences exhibited between individuals are consistent across situations. However, between som...
Male-male competition and female mating preference are major mechanisms of sexual selection, which influences individual fitness. How male-male competition affects female preference, however, remains poorly un...
The high incidence of hybridization in waterfowl (ducks, geese and swans) makes this bird group an excellent study system to answer questions related to the evolution and maintenance of species boundaries. How...
Glucocorticoids are adrenal steroid hormones essential to homeostatic maintenance. Their daily variation at low concentrations regulates physiology and behavior to sustain proper immunological and metabolic fu...
Brittle stars regenerate their whole arms post-amputation. Amphiura filiformis can now be used for molecular characterization of arm regeneration due to the availability of transcriptomic data. Previous work show...
Rapid habitat loss and degradation are responsible for population decline in a growing number of species. Understanding the natural history of these species is important for designing conservation strategies, ...
Traditional theory assumes that egg recognition and rejection abilities arise as a response against interspecific brood parasitism (IBP). However, rejection also appears in some species that are currently not ...
The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae) is a highly invasive species now with an almost cosmopolitan distribution. Two other damaging, polyphagous and closely-related sp...
The study of morphology is experiencing a renaissance due to rapid improvements in technologies for 3D visualization of complex internal and external structures. But 3D visualization of the internal structure ...
Wrasses represent the second largest family of marine fishes and display a high diversity of complex colours linked to ecological functions. Recently, red autofluorescent body colouration has been reported in ...
White-nose syndrome (WNS) has devastated bat populations in North America, with millions of bats dead. WNS is associated with physiological changes in hibernating bats, leading to increased arousals from hiber...
Terrestrial animals regularly move up and down surfaces in their natural habitat, and the impacts of moving uphill on locomotion are commonly examined. However, if an animal goes up, it must go down. Many morp...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
Frontiers in Zoology