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Abstract Understanding how climate affects trait composition within a biological assemblage is critical for assessing and eventually mitigating climate change impacts on the assemblage and its ecological functioning. While body size is a fundamental trait of animals as it affects many aspects of species' biology and ecology, it remains unclear through what mechanisms temperature and its variability influence within‐assemblage body size variation.This study aims to understand how temperature and its variability shape body size variations in animal assemblages and potentially affect assemblages' vulnerability to climate change. Using >5300 individuals of 680 macromoth species collected from 13 assemblages along a ca. 3000 m elevational gradient in Taiwan, we examined (1) the strength of environmental filtering and niche partitioning in determining the intra‐ and inter‐specific size variations within an assemblage, and (2) the effects of mean temperature and the daily and seasonal temperature variabilities on the strength of the two processes.We found that the body size composition was strongly affected by temperature and its seasonality via both processes. High temperature seasonality enhanced niche partitioning, causing within‐population size convergence. In contrast, low mean temperature and low seasonality both enhanced environmental filtering, causing within‐assemblage size convergence. However, while low temperature restricted the lower size limit within an assemblage, low seasonality restricted both lower and upper size limits.This study indicates an overlooked but important role of temperature seasonality in shaping intra‐ and inter‐specific size variations in moth assemblages through both environmental filtering and niche partitioning. With rising temperatures and amplifying seasonality around the globe, potentially weakened filtering forces may increase the size variation within assemblages, reinforcing the assemblage‐level resilience. Nevertheless, enhanced niche partitioning may limit size variation within populations, which may increase the population‐level vulnerability to environmental changes. This study improves the mechanistic understanding of the climatic effects on trait composition in animal assemblages and provides essential information for biodiversity conservation under climate change. Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog. 

Abstract The reproductive success of birds is closely tied to the characteristics of their nests. It is crucial to understand the distribution of nest traits across phylogenetic and geographic dimensions to gain insight into bird evolution and adaptation. Despite the extensive historical documentation on breeding behavior, a structured dataset describing bird nest characteristics has been lacking. To address this gap, we have compiled a comprehensive dataset that characterizes three ecologically and evolutionarily significant nest traits—site, structure, and attachment—for 9,248 bird species, representing all 36 orders and 241 out of the 244 families. By defining seven sites, seven structures, and four attachment types, we have systematically classified the nests of each species using information from text descriptions, photos, and videos sourced from online databases and literature. This nest traits dataset serves as a valuable addition to the existing body of morphological and ecological trait data for bird species, providing a useful resource for a wide range of avian macroecological and macroevolutionary research. 

Abstract Metals with kagome lattice provide bulk materials to host both the flat-band and Dirac electronic dispersions. A new family of kagome metals is recently discovered inAV₆Sn₆. The Dirac electronic structures of this material needs more experimental evidence to confirm. In the manuscript, we investigate this problem by resolving the quantum oscillations in both electrical transport and magnetization in ScV₆Sn₆. The revealed orbits are consistent with the electronic band structure models. Furthermore, the Berry phase of a dominating orbit is revealed to be aroundπ, providing direct evidence for the topological band structure, which is consistent with calculations. Our results demonstrate a rich physics and shed light on the correlated topological ground state of this kagome metal. 

The urgency for remote, reliable and scalable biodiversity monitoring amidst mounting human pressures on ecosystems has sparked worldwide interest in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), which can track life underwater and on land. However, we lack a unified methodology to report this sampling effort and a comprehensive overview of PAM coverage to gauge its potential as a global research and monitoring tool. To address this gap, we created the Worldwide Soundscapes project, a collaborative network and growing database comprising metadata from 416 datasets across all realms (terrestrial, marine, freshwater and subterranean).