Effects of temperature on metamorphosis and endochondral ossification in Rana chensinensis tadpoles.

Temperature is one of the important factors affecting the growth, development, and metamorphosis of amphibians. Endochondral ossification during metamorphosis plays a crucial role in amphibian survival and adaptation on land. In this study, we explored the effects of different temperature treatments on the growth, development, and endochondral ossification of Rana chensinensis tadpoles during metamorphosis. The results showed that high temperature exposure may affect the skeletal development of tadpoles during metamorphosis, such as reduction of bone length and ossification of limbs, thyroid gland damage and change of ossification-related genes expression levels，and ultimately affect the movement and survival of tadpoles in the terrestrial environment. These results provide an experimental reference for further research on the effects of temperature on amphibian growth and development and provide an important theoretical basis for the decline of the amphibian population caused by temperature.

Opposite effects of winter day and night temperature changes on early phenophases.

Changes in day (maximum temperature, TMAX ) and night temperature (minimum temperature, TMIN ) in the preseason (e.g., winter and spring) may have opposite effects on early phenophases (e.g., leafing and flowering) due to changing requirements of chilling accumulations (CAC) and heating accumulations (HAC), which could cause advance, delay or no change in early phenophases. However, their relative effects on phenology are largely unexplored, especially on the Tibetan Plateau. Here, observations were performed using a warming and cooling experiment in situ through reciprocal transplantation (2008-2010) on the Tibetan Plateau. We found that winter minimum temperature (TMIN ) warming significantly delayed mean early phenophases by 8.60 d/°C, but winter maximum temperature (TMAX ) warming advanced them by 12.06 d/°C across six common species. Thus, winter mean temperature warming resulted in a net advance of 3.46 d/°C in early phenophases. In contrast, winter TMIN cooling, on average, significantly advanced early phenophases by 5.12 d/°C, but winter TMAX cooling delayed them by 7.40 d/°C across six common species, resulting in a net delay of 2.28 d/°C for winter mean temperature cooling. The opposing effects of TMAX and TMIN warming on the early phenophases may be mainly caused by decreased CAC due to TMIN warming (5.29 times greater than TMAX ) and increased HAC due to TMAX warming (3.25 times greater than TMIN ), and similar processes apply to TMAX and TMIN cooling. Therefore, our study provides another insight into why some plant phenophases remain unchanged or delayed under climate change.

Changes in flowering functional group affect responses of community phenological sequences to temperature change.

Our ability to predict how temperature modifies phenology at the community scale is limited by our lack of understanding of responses by functional groups of flowering plants. These responses differ among species with different life histories. We performed a reciprocal transplant experiment along four elevation gradients (e.g., 3,200, 3,400, 3,600 and 3,800 m) to investigate the effects of warming (transferred downward) and cooling (transferred upward) on plant flowering functional groups (FFGs) and community phenological sequences (i.e., seven phenological events). Warming significantly decreased early-spring-flowering (ESF) plant coverage and increased mid-summer-flowering plant (MSF) coverage, while cooling had the opposite effect. All community phenological events were advanced by warming and delayed by cooling except for the date of complete leaf-coloring, which showed the opposite response. Warming and cooling could cause greater advance or delay in early-season phenological events of the community through increased coverage of MSF species, and warming could delay late-season phenological events of the community by increased coverage of ESF species. These results suggested that coverage change of FFGs in the community induced by temperature change could mediate the responses of the community phenological events to temperature change in the future. The response of phenological events to temperature change at the species level may not be sufficient to predict phenological responses at the community-level due to phenological compensation between species in the community.

Dynamic thermal imaging analysis in the effectiveness evaluation of warming and cooling formulations.

Warming cosmetics and medicines are used to accelerate recovery from injuries whereas cooling preparations are used in the pains of muscles, joints, spine, bruises or edema. The paper verifies subjective heating or warming sensations with respect to the measured temperature changes. The influence of three formulations, labelled C1, C2, W1, on skin reaction was tested. The first two formulations (C1, C2) had a cooling effect while the formulation W1 had warming properties. Two hundred thermal images with a resolution of N×M=120×120 pixel were acquired with the Flir i7 infrared camera. The paper also shows how to analyse low resolution thermal images and their practical usefulness. For this purpose, a dedicated algorithm for image analysis and processing, which uses morphological operations, segmentation and area analysis, was applied. Application of both C1 and C2 resulted in subjective perception of feeling cold. Approximately 7min following application of the formulation C1, the skin temperature returned to baseline levels. The minimum skin temperature after using the formulation C1 was 27.5 °C and it was registered at the time of application. Application of W1, which by definition is a warming formulation, caused a sensation of coolness in the first minutes following the application. The perception of cool and warm sensations after the application of topical formulations is in no way correlated with the skin temperature assessed using a thermal imaging method.