Cooper, C.E., Erbe, C., Withers, P.C., Barker, J.M., Ball, N. and Todd-Jones, L. (2023). Sound production by the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus). Journal of Zoology, vol. 321, pp. 302-308. https://doi.org/10.1111/jzo.13114 Authors of this study Christine Cooper and Justine Barker were radio-tracking one of the wild short-beaked echidnas involved in Justine’s PhD research to change the battery on his on-board GPS unit. They found him in a mating train with seven other echidnas, and much to their surprise, as they approached him they heard dove-like cooing sounds which he cont ..read more

This March we celebrate frogs for World Frog Day (March 20th). The diversity of frogs has fascinated zoologists from the very earliest issues of Transactions and Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, with many anatomical descriptions from the early 1800s. The more unusual traits of frogs have provided fruitful areas of research, including reproductive traits. Boulenger (1895) described parental care in both Goeldi’s frog Hyla goeldii (now Fritziana goeldi) and the golden poison arrow frog (Phyllobates terribilis), in which both species carry their post-hatch offspring on their backs ..read more

Waitangi Day (Te Rā o Waitangi) is the national day of New Zealand marking the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, an agreement between the British Crown and Māori chiefs, on 6 February, 1840. For our February ‘Species in the Spotlight’ virtual issue, we are therefore celebrating New Zealand’s land animals. Only twelve years after the signing of the Treaty, Mantell (1852) published a description and the first illustration of the takahē, which had been thought to be extinct.  The description showed that takahē had survived, but subsequent sightings were unverified, and th ..read more

Makuya, L. and Schradin, C. (2024). Costs and benefits of solitary living in mammals. Journal of Zoology, https://doi.org/10.1111/jzo.13145 In a world full of hectic, stress and conflict, many of us dream of a simpler life: Being alone in a mountain hut, in the desert, out in nature, far away from the crazy crowds. But would living solitary really solve our problems, would it be an easy life? Or would it lead to other problems, other difficulties we don’t even think about? For decades, field biologists have been going to exotic places to study why animals live in groups. Jane Goodall pion ..read more

Warburton, N.M., Withers, P.C. and Martin, M. (2024). More than one way to eat a mouse: Skull shape variation within a monophyletic group of mammals (Marsupialia; Dasyurinae). Journal of Zoology, vol. 322, pp. 76-88. https://doi.org/10.1111/jzo.13124 In a perfect research world, once you have developed a research question, fleshed out your literature review, decided on your methods and collected your data it should then be a relatively simple and straight-forward path to publishing your scientific story. Right?? Well… … as we all know, the world is not perfect and for very many of us, the ..read more

Veon, J.T., Lassiter, E.V., Johansson, E., Shaw, M., McTigue, L., Massey, A., Gibson, R. and DeGregorio, B.A. (2023). Influence of human development and predators on patterns of Virginia opossum occupancy, abundance, and activity. Journal of Zoology, vol. 321, pp. 278-288. https://doi.org/10.1111/jzo.13111 Imagine venturing into the remote wilderness. Most of the wildlife there could eat you if they had the chance. You can optimally forage at night for food, but many of these predators lurk and hunt in the shadows. You are small (approximately 3 kg), slow moving, and your main defense mec ..read more

As we are now in the northern hemisphere winter and the festive season, we throw the spotlight on Reindeer, resident of the North Pole, and a zoological symbol of modern Christmas. Reindeer or caribou (Rangifer tarandus) have featured throughout the long history of the journal, being mentioned in passing in the first volume of Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (1830, Vol 1: 79–88). Thereafter, several features of their biology have fascinated zoologists. Early work concentrated on descriptions of the different sub-species of reindeer, including a description o ..read more

We congratulate the winners of the 2022 Journal of Zoology ‘Paper of the Year’ award Alyssa Giordano, Louis Hunninck and Michael Sheriff, with their paper: Prey responses to predation risk under chronic road noise     This paper addresses the increasingly significant issue for wildlife today, anthropogenic noise, through a really clever experiment that tested for differences in foraging and vigilance behaviour of small mammals when exposed to either predation risk or road noise alone, or predation risk concurrent with road noise. With its innovative design, this is one of the first studies to ..read more

In the month of Halloween, it is timely to celebrate the diversity of bats in this Species in the Spotlight virtual issue, focussing on the megabat family Pteropodidae, the fruit bats (Acerodon) and flying foxes (Pteropus). The Family contains the largest of the bat species, but most are unlikely to strike fear into any trick-or-treaters, with their mostly herbivorous diet. Unusually for a group of bats, they do not echolocate (with a very few exceptions). Welcome to our celebration of the megabats! Bennett 1839 Plate VI: Pteropus whitei by Edward Lear Not long after the family was first descr ..read more

Escoriza, D. (2023). Success factors of great oceanic dispersers: Case of Squamata in the Pacific Ocean. Journal of Zoology, vol. 319, pp. 221-230. https://doi.org/10.1111/jzo.13042 In a previous project Dispersal patterns of Squamata in the Mediterranean: An evolutionary perspective, I modelled the potential routes of colonization of lizards and snakes (squamates) in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is a small, closed sea, in which squamate colonization has occurred by crossing relatively short distances from various parts of the surrounding continents (Africa, Asia and Europe), favo ..read more