Issues
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Cover image
Cover Image
Cover: Marine mammal specialists, such as polar bears, are reaching their physiological limits in responding to a rapidly changing Arctic. Pagano and Williams (jeb228049) review the unique physiologies of polar bears and narwhals that have enabled them to survive on top and below the Arctic sea ice. In response to climate change, polar bears are increasingly reliant on aquatic locomotion and summer land use, while narwhals are at increased risk of anthropogenic disturbance and predation from killer whales. Both species are likely to be energetically challenged by continued warming that will disrupt their ability to capture preferred prey. Photo credit: Anthony M. Pagano.
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Special Issue: Predicting the Future: Species Survival in a Changing World
INSIDE JEB
EDITORIAL
REVIEWS
Climate impacts on organisms, ecosystems and human societies: integrating OCLTT into a wider context
Summary: This Review takes a broad view how OCLTT can be looked at as an evolutionary principle that allows a deeper understanding of connectivity and the impacts of climate change in biological systems.
Physiological adaptation to cities as a proxy to forecast global-scale responses to climate change
Summary: We provide a quantitative synthesis of the use of cities as warming experiments and space-for-time substitutions to explore plasticity and evolution of thermal physiological traits under global change.
Towards more integration of physiology, dispersal and land-use change to understand the responses of species to climate change
Summary: To better understand and predict responses of species and biodiversity in a world of global change, we need more integration across disciplines, of data and methods, and across scales.
Shifts in the relative fitness contributions of fecundity and survival in variable and changing environments
Summary: We explore how detecting and predicting shifts in survival and fecundity fitness constraints can improve our ability to forecast responses to climate gradients and change.
Predicting the effects of climate change on incubation in reptiles: methodological advances and new directions
Summary: As models of embryonic development are translated from the laboratory to natural nests and scaled up to populations, fine-scale temperature data are increasingly important yet remain an often-overlooked component of our understanding of thermal developmental plasticity in reptiles.
Diving in hot water: a meta-analytic review of how diving vertebrate ectotherms will fare in a warmer world
Summary: Using meta-analytic approaches, we show that diving ectothermic vertebrates are particularly vulnerable to climate warming. On average, dive durations decreased by 11% with every 1°C increase in water temperature.
How dryland mammals will respond to climate change: the effects of body size, heat load and a lack of food and water
Summary: Dryland mammals facing climate change are encountering increasing heat as well as reduced water and food availability. We discuss these compound effects on performance in mammals of varying body size.
Physiological consequences of Arctic sea ice loss on large marine carnivores: unique responses by polar bears and narwhals
Summary: Two Arctic marine mammal specialists, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and narwhals (Monodon monoceros), are physiologically limited in their ability to respond to a rapidly warming Arctic.
Thermoregulation in desert birds: scaling and phylogenetic variation in heat tolerance and evaporative cooling
Summary: Many physiological variables related to avian heat tolerance vary significantly with body mass, but also vary substantially among taxa that differ in their reliance on panting, gular flutter or cutaneous evaporation for evaporative heat dissipation.
Dealing with predictable and unpredictable temperatures in a climate change context: the case of parasitoids and their hosts
Summary: Plasticity and bet-hedging may be adaptive strategies of hosts and parasitoids to cope with the continuum of predictable and unpredictable fluctuating temperatures in a changing climate context.
The role of mechanistic physiology in investigating impacts of global warming on fishes
Summary: Thermal performance curves are important for predicting warming effects on fish. A review of current data indicates that aerobic scope is not universally limited by warming, and alternative measures are suggested.
Bioenergetics in environmental adaptation and stress tolerance of aquatic ectotherms: linking physiology and ecology in a multi-stressor landscape
Summary: Quantification of organismal energy fluxes under different stress scenarios follows predictions of the ecological outcomes of stress exposures and understanding of the mechanisms of stressor interactions.
Avenues of reef-building coral acclimatization in response to rapid environmental change
Summary: Reef-building corals are under threat from anthropogenic impacts. The partners of the coral holobiont and coral developmental process provide symbiotic, epigenetic and genetic mechanisms for acclimatization and adaptation to climate change.
Celebrating 100 years of discovery

We are proud to be celebrating 100 years of discovery in Journal of Experimental Biology. Visit our centenary webpage to find out more about how we are marking this historic milestone.
Craig Franklin launches our centenary celebrations

Editor-in-Chief Craig Franklin reflects on 100 years of JEB and looks forward to our centenary celebrations, including a supplementary special issue, a new early-career researcher interview series and the launch of our latest funding initiatives.
Looking back on the first issue of JEB

Journal of Experimental Biology launched in 1923 as The British Journal of Experimental Biology. As we celebrate our centenary, we look back at that first issue and the zoologists publishing their work in the new journal.
Webinar: Increasing the visibility and impact of your research
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Would you like to increase the visibility and impact of your research and raise your profile internationally? If so, register for the very practical webinar we are running in association with HUBS on 23 February 2023.
Biology Communication Workshop: Engaging the world in the excitement of research
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We are delighted to be sponsoring a Biology Communication Workshop for early-career researchers as part of JEB’s centenary celebrations. The workshop focuses on how to effectively communicate your science to other researchers and the public and takes place the day before the CSZ annual meeting, on 14 May 2023. Find out more and apply here.
Mexican fruit flies wave for distraction

Dinesh Rao and colleagues have discovered that Mexican fruit flies vanish in a blur in the eyes of predatory spiders when they wave their wings at the arachnids, buying the flies time to make their escape.