Among-population variation in telomere regulatory proteins and their potential role as hidden drivers of intraspecific variation in life history.

Biologists aim to explain patterns of growth, reproduction and ageing that characterize life histories, yet we are just beginning to understand the proximate mechanisms that generate this diversity. Existing research in this area has focused on telomeres but has generally overlooked the telomere's most direct mediator, the shelterin protein complex. Shelterin proteins physically interact with the telomere to shape its shortening and repair.

Organismal effects of heat in a fixed ecological niche: Implications on the role of behavioral buffering in our changing world.

Increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves generate new challenges for many organisms. Our understanding of the ecological predictors of thermal vulnerability is improving, yet, at least in endotherms, we are still only beginning to understand one critical component of predicting resilience: exactly how do wild animals cope with sub-lethal heat? In wild endotherms, most prior work focuses on one or a few traits, leaving uncertainty about organismal consequences of heatwaves. Here, we experimentally generated a 2.

Individual differences in the behavioral characteristics of beluga whales (Dephinapterus leucas).

The topic of individual differences in animal behavior has garnered a great deal of recent attention across many species, but questions remain concerning the degree to which behavioral differences vary over time or by age and sex. The present study focused on white whales (Delphinapterus leucas), a species in which a high degree of behavioral variability may be expected due to the fact that belugas are large-brained, long-lived, and highly social in nature. A suite of 23 behavioral measures related to boldness, playfulness, sociability, and other traits were assessed in 41 seaquarium-based belugas that were housed in mixed age/sex grouping.