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Aim Species are responding to climate warming by shifting their distributions toward historically cooler regions, but the degree to which expansions at cool range limits are balanced by contractions at warm limits is unknown. We synthesized published data documenting shifts at species’ warm versus cool range limits along elevational gradients to (a) test classic ecological theory that predicts temperature more directly influences species’ cool range limits than their warm range limits, and (b) determine how warming‐associated shifts have changed the extent and area of species’ elevational distributions. Location Global. Time period 1802–2012. Major taxa studied Vascular plants, endotherms, ectotherms. Methods We compiled a dataset of 975 species from 32 elevational gradients for which range shifts have been measured at both warm and cool range limits. We compared the magnitude and variance of shifts at species’ warm versus cool limits, and quantified how range shifts have impacted species’ elevational extents and areas. Results On average species have shifted upslope associated with temperature increases at both warm and cool limits (warm limit: 92 ± 455 m/C; cool limit: 131 ± 465 m/C; overall mean ± SD). There was no systematic difference in the magnitude or variance of shifts at warm versus cool limits and thus no indication that cool limits are more directly controlled by temperature. Species’ elevational extents and available area significantly decreased for mountaintop species. Main conclusions Our results do not support the long‐standing hypothesis that cool limits are more sensitive or responsive to temperature. We find that, across the globe, mountaintop species’ ranges are significantly shrinking as they shift upslope, supporting predictions that high elevation species are especially vulnerable to temperature increases. Our synthesis highlights the extreme variation in species’ distributional responses to warming, which may indicate that biotic interactions play a more prominent role in setting range limits than previously thought.

Understanding the factors that drive community-wide assembly of plant-pollinator systems along environmental gradients has considerable evolutionary, ecological, and applied significance. Variation in thermal environments combined with intrinsic differences among pollinators in thermal biology have been proposed as drivers of community-wide pollinator gradients, but this suggestion remains largely speculative. We test the hypothesis that seasonality in bee pollinator composition in Mediterranean montane habitats of southeastern Spain, which largely reflects the prevalence during the early flowering season of mining bees (Andrena), is a consequence of the latter’s thermal biology. Quantitative information on seasonality of Andrena bees in the whole plant community (275 plant species) and their thermal microenvironment was combined with field and laboratory data on key aspects of the thermal biology of 30 species of Andrena (endothermic ability, warming constant, relationships of body temperature with ambient and operative temperatures). Andrena bees were a conspicuous, albeit strongly seasonal component of the pollinator assemblage of the regional plant community, visiting flowers of 153 different plant species (57% of total). The proportion of Andrena relative to all bees reached a maximum among plant species which flowered in late winter and early spring, and declined precipitously from May onward. Andrena were recorded only during the cooler segment of the annual range of air temperatures experienced at flowers by the whole bee assemblage. These patterns can be explained by features of Andrena’s thermal biology: null to weak endothermy; ability to forage at much lower body temperature than strongly endothermic bees (difference ~ 10°C); low upper tolerable limit of body temperature, beyond which thermal stress presumably precluded foraging at the warmest period of year; weak thermoregulatory capacity; and high warming constant enhancing ectothermic warming. Our results demonstrate the importance of lineage-specific pollinator traits as drivers of seasonality in community-wide pollinator composition; show that exploitation of cooler microclimates by bees does not require strong endothermy; and suggest that intense endothermy and precise thermoregulation probably apply to a minority of bees. Medium- and large-sized bees with low upper thermal limits and weak thermoregulatory ability can actually be more adversely affected by climate warming than large, hot-blooded, extremely endothermic species.

As global temperatures reach record highs, threats posed by climate change to biodiversity become ever more severe. For endotherms, maintaining body temperature within safe bounds is fundamental for performance and survival. Animals routinely modify their behavior to buffer physiological impacts of high temperatures (eg ceasing activity, seeking shade). However, this can impose substantial costs related to missed opportunities to engage in other important activities, with potentially large but often overlooked consequences for survival and reproduction. Here, we outline behavioral trade-offs birds and mammals face in navigating thermal landscapes and associated challenges of balancing energy, water, and time budgets; review the rapidly expanding knowledge in this field; and summarize examples – across taxa – of fitness costs during hot weather. We argue that a shift is needed in evaluating the impacts of heat on birds and mammals, and that fitness costs of missed opportunities must be explicitly integrated into climate-change vulnerability frameworks.

The reaction of methane decomposition is an endothermic process that produces hydrogen without any impurities as a gas product and carbon nanotubes/carbon nanofibers as a solid product. In this study, NiO–MgO catalysts with different nickel loadings (20, 30, 40, and 50 wt. %) were synthesized using the mechanochemical method. The Physicochemical features of the synthesized catalysts were characterized by various methods such as BET, XRD, SEM, TPO, and H2-TPR. The prepared samples were tested in the methane decomposition process at various temperatures under the GHSV value of 48,000 ml/(gcat h). Among the prepared samples, the 50wt.%NiO–MgO exhibited the best activity (40% methane conversion at 575 °C) in this process due to its higher concentration of active metal and better catalyst reducibility. Also, the effect of different parameters such as feed ratio, GHSV, and calcination temperature was studied on the activity of this catalyst. The results showed that with the increase of GHSV and feed ratio, the methane conversion decreased due to the lesser contact time and diminishing the proportion of accessible active sites per methane entrance molecules. Moreover, the results showed that with the rise of calcination temperature from 500 to 700 °C, the methane conversion decreased due to the sintering of nickel particles. The results also showed that the addition of 15 wt.% Cr2O3 to the catalyst formulation improved the catalytic performance and lifetime in the thermocatalytic decomposition of methane due to the higher reducibility and dispersion of the active species on the catalyst surface.

Human land use has caused substantial declines in global species richness. Evidence from different taxonomic groups and geographic regions suggests that land use does not equally impact all organisms within terrestrial ecological communities, and that different functional groups of species may respond differently. In particular, we expect large carnivores to decline more in disturbed land uses than other animal groups. We present the first global synthesis of responses to land use across functional groups using data from a wide set of animal species, including herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, fungivores and detritivores; and ranging in body mass from 2 × 10−6 g (an oribatid mite) to 3,825 kg (the African elephant). We show that the abundance of large endotherms, small ectotherms, carnivores and fungivores (although in the last case, not significantly) are reduced disproportionately in human land uses compared with the abundance of other functional groups. The results, suggesting that certain functional groups are consistently favoured over others in land used by humans, imply a substantial restructuring of ecological communities. Given that different functional groups make unique contributions to ecological processes, it is likely that there will be substantial impacts on the functioning of ecosystems. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

This paper presents an up-to-date overview of the various advanced materials as adsorbent used in the recovery of precious metals from wastewater. The precious metals concentrated here include gold, silver, palladium and platinum, whose recovery is interesting mainly due to their vast industrial applications and high market prices. Among various methods, adsorption approach is one of the most efficient techniques for the recovery of precious metal ions from aqueous solutions. There are a number of absorbents such as carbon materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), biopolymers, silicas, resins, and transition-metal sulfides, which have been developed and explored to efficient recovery of precious metal ions from wastewater. Thermodynamics and kinetics were further discussed for exploring the adsorption mechanism of precious metal ions in these advanced materials. It was found that the adsorption process of these metals is mostly spontaneous (ΔG < 0) and endothermic (ΔH > 0) in nature. This review would contribute to the development of advanced materials for recovery of precious metals from secondary sources such as wastewater.

Many biological surfaces of animals and plants (e.g., bird feathers, insect wings, plant leaves, etc.) are superhydrophobic with rough surfaces at different length scales. Previous studies have focused on a simple drop-bouncing behavior on biological surfaces with low-speed impacts. However, we observed that an impacting drop at high speeds exhibits more complicated dynamics with unexpected shock-like patterns: Hundreds of shock-like waves are formed on the spreading drop, and the drop is then abruptly fragmented along with multiple nucleating holes. Such drop dynamics result in the rapid retraction of the spreading drop and thereby a more than twofold decrease in contact time. Our results may shed light on potential biological advantages of hypothermia risk reduction for endothermic animals and spore spreading enhancement for fungi via wave-induced drop fragmentation.

Endothermy, i.e. the endogenous production of metabolic heat, has evolved multiple times among vertebrates, and several strategies of heat production have been studied extensively by physiologists over the course of the twentieth century. The independent acquisition of endothermy by mammals and birds has been the subject of many hypotheses regarding their origin and associated evolutionary constraints. Many groups of vertebrates, however, are thought to possess other mechanisms of heat production, and alternative ways to regulate thermogenesis that are not always considered in the palaeontological literature. Here, we perform a review of the mechanisms involved in heat production, with a focus on cellular and molecular mechanisms, in a phylogenetic context encompassing the entire vertebrate diversity. We show that endothermy in mammals and birds is not as well defined as commonly assumed by evolutionary biologists and consists of a vast array of physiological strategies, many of which are currently unknown. We also describe strategies found in other vertebrates, which may not always be considered endothermy, but nonetheless correspond to a process of active thermogenesis. We conclude that endothermy is a highly plastic character in vertebrates and provides a guideline on terminology and occurrences of the different types of heat production in vertebrate evolution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vertebrate palaeophysiology’.

A pH-sensitive chitosan/sepiolite clay/algae biocomposite (Chi/Sep/Alg) was fabricated to remove cationic (malachite green, MG) and anionic (remazol brilliant blue R, RBBR) dyes from aqueous. The characteristics of Chi/Sep/Alg biocomposite were investigated by pHpzc, pH-potentiometric titration, CHNS, XRD, SEM–EDX, FTIR, and BET analyses. A Box–Behnken design (BBD) was adopted to optimize the adsorptive performance of the Chi/Sep/Alg biocomposite towards removal of MG and RBBR dyes using three controllable operating factors, namely Chi/Sep/Alg dose (0.02–0.1 g), solution pH (4–8), and process time (5–30 min). The ideal BBD model circumstances for MG dye removal efficiency were as follows: Chi/Sep/Alg dose (0.1 g/L), solution pH 8, and time (17.5 min), while for RBBR dye, the ideal circumstances were Chi/Sep/Alg dose (0.1 g/L), pH ~ 4, and time (17.5 min). The adsorption kinetic and isotherm reflect that the adsorption of MG and RBBR dyes onto Chi/Sep/Alg biocomposite obeyed pseudo-second-order and Freundlich isotherm model, respectively. The maximum adsorption capacities of Chi/Sep/Alg biocomposite towards MG (515.7 mg/g) at basic pH environment (pH 8) and RBBR (292.4 mg/g) at acidic pH environment (pH 4). An endothermic and spontaneous adsorption process of MG and RBBR dyes was confirmed by the calculated thermodynamic functions. The adsorption mechanism of MG and RBBR dyes on the surface of Chi/Sep/Alg biocomposite can be attributed to various interactions such as electrostatic, H-bonding, and n-π interactions. Thus, this pH-sensitive Chi/Sep/Alg biocomposite exhibits a great affinity towards capturing cationic and anionic dyes by adjusting the solution pH.

Recent discoveries of spectacular dinosaur fossils overwhelmingly support the hypothesis that birds are descended from maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs, and furthermore, demonstrate that distinctive bird characteristics such as feathers, flight, endothermic physiology, unique strategies for reproduction and growth, and a novel pulmonary system originated among Mesozoic terrestrial dinosaurs. The transition from ground-living to flight-capable theropod dinosaurs now probably represents one of the best-documented major evolutionary transitions in life history. Recent studies in developmental biology and other disciplines provide additional insights into how bird characteristics originated and evolved. The iconic features of extant birds for the most part evolved in a gradual and stepwise fashion throughout archosaur evolution. However, new data also highlight occasional bursts of morphological novelty at certain stages particularly close to the origin of birds and an unavoidable complex, mosaic evolutionary distribution of major bird characteristics on the theropod tree. Research into bird origins provides a premier example of how paleontological and neontological data can interact to reveal the complexity of major innovations, to answer key evolutionary questions, and to lead to new research directions. A better understanding of bird origins requires multifaceted and integrative approaches, yet fossils necessarily provide the final test of any evolutionary model. Research on the origin and evolution of birds has gathered pace in recent years, aided by a continuous stream of new fossil finds as well as molecular phylogenies. Bird origins, in particular, are now better understood than those of mammals, for which the early fossil record is relatively poor compared with that of birds. Xu et al. review progress in tracing the origins of birds from theropod dinosaurs, focusing especially on recent fossil finds of feathered dinosaurs of northeastern China. They integrate current research on developmental biology and functional anatomy with the paleontological record, to show how key features of birds—feathers, wings, and flight—originated and evolved, and radiated from their dinosaur forebears. Science , this issue 10.1126/science.1253293