Nicholas Wu

Torpor is an important energy-saving strategy for small insectivorous bats during winter. White-nose syndrome (WNS), a fungal disease affecting hibernating bats, disrupts torpor-arousal patterns and increases energy use, leading to higher winter mortality. In North America, WNS has also infected bats in milder southern climates, supporting concerns about potential impacts if introduced to the Southern Hemisphere. To understand the winter hibernation ecology and sensitivity to WNS of cave-roosting bats, we used temperature telemetry to study torpor patterns and body mass change of the eastern bent-winged bat (Miniopterus orianae oceanensis) at a cold and warm site (mean annual surface temperature 11.7 and 17.8 °C, respectively) in southeastern Australia during winter. Torpor bouts were 4.6 times longer at the cold site (30.8 ± 21.4 h, max = 304.8 h) than at the warm site (6.7 ± 3.8 h, max = 46.5 h), and normothermia duration was longer at the warm site (7.8 ± 3.6 h) than at the cold site (6.6 ± 2.9 h). Torpor bout duration, probability of arousal, and normothermia duration were influenced by nightly weather and season. Mean overwinter body mass loss was twice as high at the cold site (3.1 g) than at the warm site (1.2 g), likely reflecting overwinter food availability. This study provides insights into bat hibernation in mild climates where WNS poses a threat, suggesting that similarities in overwinter torpor and body mass loss to North American species in similar climates may indicate a risk of reduced winter survival for some Australian cave-roosting bat species.

Cell cultures are a valuable tool for the study of in vitro disease processes, especially where such processes concern wild and/or threatened animal species. However, the collection of adequate samples for cell line preparation can be challenging under field conditions due to logistical challenges and access to equipment. In this paper, we describe the generation of fibroblast cell lines derived from wing-punch biopsies of Australian eastern bent-winged bats (
), expanding on and modifying existing protocols. Twenty wing-punch biopsies were collected from free-ranging individuals in New South Wales in February 2024 and shipped to the University of Melbourne, Victoria, within 24 hours. To assess the impact of different preservation methods on sample integrity, samples were subjected to two different shipping treatments: Ten were snap-frozen immediately upon collection, and the other ten were placed in cool phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) for transport. To test the effect of different plating treatments, samples were plated as either collagenase-digested cells or explants. Although none of the frozen biopsies or explants showed any growth, all samples transported in cool PBS and plated as digested cells remained viable. While agitation of the samples prior to plating resulted in an initially faster rate of cell growth, cells derived from tissue that had been digested multiple times spread across the plate and formed a monolayer significantly faster than those that had been digested only once. This study confirms the effectiveness of existing cell culture protocols using non-lethal sampling techniques in an Australian insectivorous bat species and shows a novel method of maximizing cell yield from a single biopsy. It also introduces an alternative transportation method, beneficial for field sample collection. These cell cultures are essential tools for future studies on disease susceptibility and pathogen responses in bat species, particularly those belonging to the family Miniopteridae. Additionally, they can be used for biobanking efforts, preserving the genetic material of non-model organisms for broader conservation purposes.

More and more data on species traits are being collected and made openly available. Despite these efforts, effective syntheses of trait data to comprehend how species respond to and affect their environment are hampered by inadequate standards for publishing the data and the associated metadata, which limits the interoperability and reuse of data across studies.

We have developed ShareTrait ( https://sharetrait.org/ ), a novel initiative that consolidates individual‐level trait data and associated metadata in an interoperable and reusable format, enabling standardised and integrated use. As a proof‐of‐concept, we initially focus on three core traits of ectotherms: metabolic rate, development time and fecundity. These traits, measurable in almost all animals, are fundamental to an organism’s overall fitness.

ShareTrait enables researchers to share their (meta)data with the research community. To date, researchers from diverse fields have contributed 28,692 individual‐level data records to ShareTrait. These records originated from 45 datasets and are just the tip of the iceberg of existing data, highlighting the potential of ShareTrait to be a valuable community resource for meta‐analyses and comparative approaches.

Future directions of ShareTrait will focus on accumulating more records, expanding to cover more traits, including those measurable at the population level, and partnering with journals in relevant fields (ecology, physiology, evolution) to make sharing standardised trait data part of the standard publication process.

We envision ShareTrait, along with its digital infrastructure and comprehensive metadata, to be a catalyst for collating trait data across species. ShareTrait can streamline research efforts, minimise duplication and empower researchers to explore patterns and broader ecological, evolutionary and physiological questions among taxa (e.g. via meta‐analyses and comparative approaches). This way, ShareTrait will unlock new frontiers in trait‐based approaches, enhancing our understanding of species–environment relationships.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Seasonality is a fundamental challenge for life on Earth and energy storage prior to colder and drier periods by fattening is a common strategy for survival. Fattening should reflect a trade-off between an expected seasonal energy deficit and the costs of increased body mass, which are particularly important to flying endotherms. We examined body mass change (ΔM), a proxy of fat storage, among bat populations over low productivity periods with global variation in yearly average and seasonality of local climates. We found that ΔM increased with decreasing mean annual surface temperature (MAST) but ΔM also increased at higher MAST with higher seasonality of rainfall. Seasonal use of body energy reserves by bats is predicted to be widespread in warm, seasonal climates at low latitudes but is poorly studied compared to cold temperate regions. In colder climates only, females lost less mass than males over winter, supporting the 'thrifty females' hypothesis, and ΔM has increased with year of study in warm climates, possibly linked to effects of global climate change on their energetics. Our quantitative synthesis highlights how intrinsic and environmental factors shape seasonal fattening in bats, and its global importance for survival in this diverse and widespread mammal group.

Human impacts on ecosystems have intensified variation in water variability for terrestrial life, thus challenging the maintenance of water balance, or hydroregulation. The accelerated development and accessibility of technologies and computational models over the past decade have enabled researchers to predict changes in animal hydroregulation and environmental water with greater spatial and temporal precision. Focusing on reptiles and amphibians, we discuss current methods, limitations and advances for quantifying ecologically relevant metrics of environmental water stressors and organismal responses to both acute and long-term water stress that are applicable for conservation and management. We also highlight approaches that integrate environmental water data with an organism's water balance and physiological, behavioural and life history traits to predict the limits of species' responses and assess their vulnerability to climate change. Finally, we outline promising future directions and opportunities in hydroregulation studies with a conservation focus, including broader inferences about acclimation responses, linking gene expression to functional changes, and exploring inter-and transgenerational plasticity and adaptive evolution. Advances in these fields will facilitate more accurate assessments of species' capacities and the limits of hydroregulation in response to a more variable and unpredictable future climate.

Publishing preprints is quickly becoming commonplace in ecology and evolutionary biology. Preprints can facilitate the rapid sharing of scientific knowledge establishing precedence and enabling feedback from the research community before peer review. Yet, significant barriers to preprint use exist, including language barriers, a lack of understanding about the benefits of preprints and a lack of diversity in the types of research outputs accepted (e.g. reports). Community-driven preprint initiatives can allow a research community to come together to break down these barriers to improve equity and coverage of global knowledge. Here, we explore the first preprints uploaded to EcoEvoRxiv (n = 1216), a community-driven preprint server for ecologists and evolutionary biologists, to characterize preprint use in ecology, evolution and conservation. Our perspective piece highlights some of the unique initiatives that EcoEvoRxiv has taken to break down barriers to scientific publishing by exploring the composition of articles, how gender and career stage influence preprint use, whether preprints are associated with greater open science practices (e.g. code and data sharing) and tracking preprint publication outcomes. Our analysis identifies areas that we still need to improve upon but highlights how community-driven initiatives, such as EcoEvoRxiv, can play a crucial role in shaping publishing practices in biology.

Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrates, yet their resilience to rising temperatures remains poorly understood1,2. This is primarily because knowledge of thermal tolerance is taxonomically and geographically biased3, compromising global climate vulnerability assessments. Here we used a phylogenetically informed data-imputation approach to predict the heat tolerance of 60% of amphibian species and assessed their vulnerability to daily temperature variations in thermal refugia. We found that 104 out of 5,203 species (2%) are currently exposed to overheating events in shaded terrestrial conditions. Despite accounting for heat-tolerance plasticity, a 4 °C global temperature increase would create a step change in impact severity, pushing 7.5% of species beyond their physiological limits. In the Southern Hemisphere, tropical species encounter disproportionally more overheating events, while non-tropical species are more susceptible in the Northern Hemisphere. These findings challenge evidence for a general latitudinal gradient in overheating risk4,5,6 and underscore the importance of considering climatic variability in vulnerability assessments. We provide conservative estimates assuming access to cool shaded microenvironments. Thus, the impacts of global warming will probably exceed our projections. Our microclimate-explicit analyses demonstrate that vegetation and water bodies are critical in buffering amphibians during heat waves. Immediate action is needed to preserve and manage these microhabitat features.

White-nose syndrome (WNS), a disease affecting hibernating bats, is caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd). Since the initial introduction of Pd from Eurasia to the United States in 2006, WNS has killed millions of bats throughout the temperate parts of North America. There is concern that if Pd is accidentally introduced to the Southern Hemisphere, WNS could pose similar threats to the bat fauna of the Southern Hemisphere's more temperate regions. Efforts are required to better understand the vulnerability of bats globally to WNS. We examined phylogenetic distances among cave roosting bat species globally to estimate the probability of infection by Pd. We predicted cave thermal suitability for Pd for 441 cave-roosting bat species across the globe via spatial analysis. We used host specificity models based on 65 species tested for Pd to determine phylogenetic specificity of Pd. Phylogenetic distance was not an important predictor of Pd infection, confirming that Pd has low host specificity. We found extensive areas (i.e., South America, Africa, and Australia) in the Southern Hemisphere with caves that were suitable for cave-roosting bat species and for Pd growth. Hence, if Pd spreads to the Southern Hemisphere, the risk of exposure is widespread for cave-roosting bats, and infection is possible regardless of relatedness to infected species in the Northern Hemisphere. Predicting the consequences of infection remains difficult due to lack of species-specific information about bat winter biology. Nevertheless, WNS is an important threat to naive Southern Hemisphere bat populations. Hence, biosecurity measures and planning of management responses that can help prevent or minimize a potential WNS outbreak in the Southern Hemisphere are urgently needed.

Increasing variable hydroperiods may leave ectotherms with complex life cycles more vulnerable to the impacts of environmental drying. While developmental plasticity may enable some species to escape drying ponds, this plasticity might result in trade-offs with performance and subsequent fitness in adults. Here, we used rice paddy frogs (Fejervarya limnocharis) to test how pond drying influences the developmental plasticity of tadpoles, and the resulting carryover effects on body size and jumping performance. We predicted that tadpoles under simulated drought conditions (2-0.25 cm depth) compared to low stable water level conditions (0.25 cm depth) would develop faster, and the resulting metamorphs would be smaller and exhibit lower jumping performance. We show that tadpoles in drying conditions had a faster developmental rate than tadpoles in stable low water level treatments. The size of metamorphs from the drying treatment was similar to the high-water treatments (2 cm depth), but maximum jumping distance of individuals from the drying condition was lower than that of the high-water treatment. These results indicate that drying conditions for F. limnocharis increase development rate without a reduction in size at metamorphosis, but with poorer mass-independent locomotor performance, which can potentially impact their survival.