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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...
Intracellular sequestration requires specialized cellular and molecular mechanisms allowing a predator to retain and use specific organelles that once belonged to its prey. Little is known about how common cel...
Echinoderms are a phylum of marine invertebrates with close phylogenetic relationships to chordates. Many members of the phylum Echinodermata are capable of extensive post-traumatic regeneration and life-long ...
Pycnogonida (sea spiders) is the sister group of all other extant chelicerates (spiders, scorpions and relatives) and thus represents an important taxon to inform early chelicerate evolution. Notably, phylogen...
Sexual selection has driven sexual dimorphism in agonistic behaviour in many species. Agonistic behaviour is fundamentally altered by domestication and captivity, but it is unclear whether ancestral sex differ...
Ectoparasites inhabit the body surface or outgrowths of hosts and are usually detrimental to host health and wellbeing. Hosts, however, vary in quality and may lead ectoparasites to aggregate on preferred host...
The comparative embryology of Chelicerata has greatly advanced in recent years with the integration of classical studies and genetics, prominently spearheaded by developmental genetic works in spiders. Nonethe...
Separation of biotic and abiotic impacts on species diversity distribution patterns across a significant climatic gradient is a challenge in the study of diversity maintenance mechanisms. The basic task is to ...
Relatively few studies have examined the interactive effects of ecological factors on physiological responses in wild animals. Nearly all of them have been short-term investigations that did not include experi...
The diversity of biological and ecological characteristics of organisms, and the underlying genetic patterns and processes of speciation, makes the development of universally applicable genetic species delimit...
The onset of morphological differences between related groups can be tracked at early stages during embryological development. This is expressed in functional traits that start with minor variations, but event...
Sea turtle hatchlings must avoid numerous predators during dispersal from their nesting beaches to foraging grounds. Hatchlings minimise time spent in predator-dense neritic waters by swimming almost continuou...
Despite its important implications in behavioural and evolutionary ecology, male mate choice has been poorly studied, and the relative contribution of personality and morphological traits remains largely unkno...
Glucocorticoids (e.g. cortisol) are associated with variation in social behavior, and previous studies have linked baseline as well as challenge-induced glucocorticoid concentrations to dominance status. It is...
Local mate competition (LMC) favours female biased clutch sex ratios because it reduces competition between brothers and provides extra mating opportunities for sons. Fig wasps seem to fit LMC model assumption...
The original article was published in Frontiers in Zoology 2021 18:46
Temperature stress is one of the crucial factors determining geographical distribution of insect species. Most of them are active in moderate temperatures, however some are capable of surviving in extremely hi...
Foraging in group living animals such as social insects, is collectively performed by individuals. However, our understanding on foraging behavior of subterranean termites is extremely limited, as the process ...
RNA interference (RNAi) has emerged as a powerful tool for knocking-down gene function in diverse taxa including arthropods for both basic biological research and application in pest control. The conservation ...
Efficient transfer of chemical signals is important for successful mating in many animal species. Multiple evolutionary lineages of animals evolved direct sex pheromone transmission during traumatic mating—the...
A basal spicule of the hexactinellid sponge Monorhaphis chuni may reach up to 3 m in length and 10 mm in diameter, an extreme case of large spicule size. Generally, sponge spicules are of scales from micrometers ...
Centipedes are terrestrial, predatory arthropods with specialized sensory organs. However, many aspects of their sensory biology are still unknown. This also concerns hygroreception, which is especially import...
Density-dependent change in aggressive behavior contributes to the population regulation of many small rodents, but the underlying neurological mechanisms have not been examined in field conditions. We hypothe...
Mammalian mandible and cranium are well-established model systems for studying canalization and developmental stability (DS) as two elements of developmental homeostasis. Nematode infections are usually acquir...
Frontiers in Zoology