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Animal physiology is the scientific study of the life-supporting properties, functions and processes of animals or their parts. The discipline covers key homeostatic processes, such as the regulation of temperature, blood flow and hormones.
The parental experience exerts a profound impact on offspring phenotypes. Zhu et al. find that in locusts the population density of parents regulates the hatching synchrony of progeny eggs via the FOXN1-PTBP1/XPO5 pathway, facilitating the nuclear export of precursor miRNA in the oocytes.
Reduced human mobility during the pandemic will reveal critical aspects of our impact on animals, providing important guidance on how best to share space on this crowded planet.