Search

Abstract Over recent decades, our understanding of climate change has accelerated greatly, but unfortunately, observable impacts have increased in tandem. Both mitigation and adaptation have not progressed at the level or scale warranted by our collective knowledge on climate change. More effective approaches to engage people on current and future anthropogenic climate change effects are urgently needed. Here, we show how species whose distributions are shifting in response to climate change, that is, ‘species‐on‐the‐move’, present an opportunity to engage people with climate change by linking to human values, and our deep connections with the places in which we live, in a locally relevant yet globally coherent narrative. Species‐on‐the‐move can impact ecosystem structure and function, food security, human health, livelihoods, culture and even the climate itself through feedback to the climate system, presenting a wide variety of potential pathways for people to understand that climate change affects them personally as individuals. Citizen science focussed on documenting changes in biodiversity is one approach to foster a deeper engagement on climate change. However, other possible avenues, which may offer potential to engage people currently unconnected with nature, include arts, games or collaborations with rural agriculture (e.g. new occurrences of pest species) or fisheries organisations (e.g. shifting stocks) or healthcare providers (e.g. changing distributions of disease vectors). Through the importance we place on the aspects of life impacted by the redistribution of species around us, species‐on‐the‐move offer emotional pathways to connect with people on the complex issue of climate change in profound ways that have the potential to engender interest and action on climate change. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Understanding whether intraspecific trait variation results from local adaptation or phenotypic plasticity is crucial to predict species responses to climate change. Here the authors investigate geographically distinct burying beetle populations, showing that photoperiodism is a locally adapted, not phenotypically plastic, trait.

Body size shifts under climate change may arise from species range shifts, intraspecific size shifts, or both. Here the authors show that body size reduction in moth assemblages on Mt. Kinabalu, Borneo, over 42 years are driven more by species range shifts than by within-species shrinkage.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The climatic variability hypothesis posits that the magnitude of climatic variability increases with latitude, elevation, or both, and that greater variability selects for organisms with broader temperature tolerances, enabling them to be geographically widespread. We tested this classical hypothesis for the elevational range sizes of more than 16,500 terrestrial vertebrates on 180 montane gradients. In support of the hypothesis, mean elevational range size was positively correlated with the scope of seasonal temperature variation, whereas elevational range size was negatively correlated with daily temperature variation among gradients. In accordance with a previous life history model and our extended versions of it, our findings indicate that physiological specialization may be favored under shorter-term climatic variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a 6-bit 1-GS/s 49 mW two-channel two-step analog-to-digital converter (ADC) without calibration is implemented in 0.13-μm CMOS process. The proposed multiplying digital-to-analog converter (MDAC) processes the analog signal with two clock periods for one conversion: half for sampling, half for Coarse ADC (CADC) resolving, and one for residue amplification. A self-timing technique is used to prevent disturbance at the beginning of the residue amplification. The reduction of the MDAC output swing by enhancing the accuracy of CADC increases the output devices' over-drive voltage and decreases output loading. The proposed design methods allow closed-loop MDAC to operate at high speed while maintaining low power consumption. The measured SFDR, SNR, and SNDR are 40.7 dB, 33.8 dB, and 33.7 dB, respectively, at the Nyquist rate input. The ADC power dissipation is 49 mW and corresponds to a figure-of-merit (F0M) of 1.24 pJ/conv.-step. The active area occupies 0.16 mm2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physiological research suggests that tropical insects are particularly sensitive to temperature, but information on their responses to climate change has been lacking—even though the majority of all terrestrial species are insects and their diversity is concentrated in the tropics. Here, we provide evidence that tropical insect species have already undertaken altitude increases, confirming the global reach of climate change impacts on biodiversity. In 2007, we repeated a historical altitudinal transect, originally carried out in 1965 on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, sampling 6 moth assemblages between 1,885 and 3,675 m elevation. We estimate that the average altitudes of individuals of 102 montane moth species, in the family Geometridae, increased by a mean of 67 m over the 42 years. Our findings indicate that tropical species are likely to be as sensitive as temperate species to climate warming, and we urge ecologists to seek other historic tropical samples to carry out similar repeat surveys. These observed changes, in combination with the high diversity and thermal sensitivity of insects, suggest that large numbers of tropical insect species could be affected by climate warming. As the highest mountain in one of the most biodiverse regions of the world, Mount Kinabalu is a globally important refuge for terrestrial species that become restricted to high altitudes by climate warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study regarding monascus pilosus, a filamentous fungus. The study aims to evaluate the transformation efficiency of the fungus with the use of aurintricarboxylic acid (ATA). According to the researchers, ATA treatment makes the fungus's transformation efficiency higher compared with the use of a non-restriction-enzyme-mediated integration (REMI).

Direct encapsulation of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) was realized by using highly transparent, photo-curable co-polyacrylate/silica nanocomposite resin. Feasibility of such a resin for OLED encapsulation was evaluated by physical/electrical property analysis of resins and driving voltage/luminance/lifetime measurement of OLEDs. Electrical property analysis revealed a higher electrical insulation of photocured nanocomposite resin film at 3.20 × 1012 Ω in comparison with that of oligomer film at 1.18 × 1012 Ω at 6.15 V to drive the bare OLED. This resulted a lower leakage current and the device driving voltage was efficiently reduced so that the nanocomposite-encapsulated OLED could be driven at a lower driving voltage of 6.09 V rather than 6.77 V for the oligomer-encapsulated OLED at the current density of 20 mA/cm². Luminance measurement revealed a less than 1.0% luminance difference of OLEDs encapsulated by various types of resins, which indicates that the photo-polymerization takes very little effect on the light-emitting property of OLEDs. Lifetime measurement of OLEDs found that t80, the time span for the normalized luminance of device drops to 80%, for nanocomposite-encapsulated OLED is 350.17 h in contrast to 16.83 h for bare OLED and 178.17 h for the oligomer-encapsulated OLED. This demonstrates that nanocomposite resin with optimum properties is feasible to OLED packaging and a compact device structure could be achieved via the method of direct encapsulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distributions of many terrestrial organisms are currently shifting in latitude or elevation in response to changing climate. Using a meta-analysis, we estimated that the distributions of species have recently shifted to higher elevations at a median rate of 11.0 meters per decade, and to higher latitudes at a median rate of 16.9 kilometers per decade. These rates are approximately two and three times faster than previously reported. The distances moved by species are greatest in studies showing the highest levels of warming, with average latitudinal shifts being generally sufficient to track temperature changes. However, individual species vary greatly in their rates of change, suggesting that the range shift of each spades depends on multiple internal spades traits and external drivers of change. Rapid average shifts derive from a wide diversity of responses by individual species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]