Nicholas C. Wu

• PhD in Ecological Physiology
• Lecturer at Murdoch University

Burrowing is an important form of locomotion in reptiles, but no study has examined the energetic cost of burrowing for reptiles. This is significant because burrowing is the most energetically expensive mode of locomotion undertaken by animals and many burrowing species therefore show specialisations for their subterranean lifestyle. We examined t...

Certain lizards are known to run bipedally. Modelling studies suggest bipedalism in lizards may be a consequence of a caudal shift in the body centre of mass, combined with quick bursts of acceleration, causing a torque moment at the hip lifting the front of the body. However, some lizards appear to run bipedally sooner and for longer than expected...

Chytridiomycosis, a lethal fungal skin disease of amphibians, fatally disrupts ionic and osmotic homeostasis. Infected amphibians increase their skin shedding rate (sloughing) to slow pathogen growth, but the sloughing process also increases skin permeability. Healthy amphibians increase active ion uptake during sloughing by increasing ion transpor...

Energetic cost of growth determines how much food-derived energy is needed to produce a given amount of new biomass and thereby influences energy transduction between trophic levels. Growth and development are regulated by hormones and are therefore sensitive to changes in temperature and environmental endocrine disruption. Here, we show that the e...

Aim The body size of marine megafauna can influence population dynamics because larger females have disproportionally greater reproductive output. We explored how this size scaling relationship can affect predictions of population size structure in nesting sea turtles by combining a phylogenetically controlled meta‐analysis with a long‐term field n...

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 pr...

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...

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 understandi...

Compared with the risks associated with climate warming and extremes, the risks of climate-induced drying to animal species remain understudied. This is particularly true for water-sensitive groups, such as anurans (frogs and toads), whose long-term survival must be considered in the context of both environmental changes and species sensitivity. He...

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 t...

Respirometry is an important tool for understanding whole-animal energy and water balance in relation to the environment. Consequently, the growing number of studies using respirometry over the last decade warrants reliable reporting and data sharing for effective dissemination and research synthesis. We provide a checklist guideline on five key se...

Here, we explore the first preprints uploaded to EcoEvoRxiv to characterise preprint practices in ecology and evolution. We aim to understand: 1) in what countries authors who use EcoEvoRxiv are located; 2) the taxonomic diversity of study systems across preprints; 3) whether preprint server use depends on career stage and gender; 4) the extent to...

Respirometry is an important tool for understanding whole-animal energy and water balance. Consequently, the growing number of studies using respirometry over the last decade warrants reliable reporting and data sharing for effective research synthesis and dissemination. We provide a checklist guideline on five key areas to facilitate the transpare...

Species exposed to prolonged drying are at risk of population declines or extinctions. Understanding species' sensitivity to water loss and microhabitat preference, or ecotype, is therefore vital for assessing climate change risks. Here, we mapped global areas where water-sensitive vertebrates, i.e., anurans, will face increasing aridity and drough...

Comparative analyses and meta-analyses are key tools to elucidate broad biological principles, yet the two approaches often appear different in purpose. We propose an integrated approach that can generate deeper insights into eco-evolutionary processes. Marrying comparative and meta-analytic approaches will allow for 1) a more accurate investigatio...

Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) from the sun is a natural daytime stressor for vertebrates in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. UVR effects on the physiology of vertebrates manifest at the cellular level, but have bottom-up effects at the tissue level and on whole-animal performance and behaviours. Climate change and habitat loss (i.e. loss of s...

Aim: Global warming and deforestation are pushing species closer to their physiological limit, especially for species with habitat-restricted life stages because sunlit areas have higher maximum temperatures. Here, we examined the critical thermal maximum (CT max), and maximum environmental water temperature (T max) of larvae from 29 anuran species...

The progression of infectious disease depends on the intensity of and sensitivity to pathogen infection. Understanding commonalities in trait sensitivity to pathogen infection across studies through meta‐analytic approaches could provide insight to the pathogenesis of infectious diseases. The globally devastating amphibian chytrid fungus, Batrachoc...

Thermal tolerances, such as critical temperatures, are important indices for understanding an organism's vulnerability to changing environmental temperature. Differences in thermal tolerance over ontogeny may generate a 'thermal bottleneck' that sets the climate vulnerability for organisms with complex life cycles. However, a species' microhabitat...

Human activities such as urbanization often has negative affects wildlife. However, urbanization can also be beneficial to some animals by providing suitable microhabitats. To test the impact of urbanization on cold-blooded animals, we first conducted a snake survey at a national nature reserve (Xianghai natural reserve) and an adjacent tourist bir...

Comparative analyses have a long history of macro-ecological and-evolutionary approaches to understand structure, function, mechanism and constraint. As the pace of science accelerates, there is ever-increasing access to diverse types of data and open access databases that are enabling and inspiring new research. Whether conducting a species-level...

Physiology can underlie movement, including short-term activity, exploration of unfamiliar environments, and larger scale dispersal, and thereby influence species distributions in an environmentally sensitive manner. We conducted meta-analyses of the literature to establish, firstly, whether physiological traits underlie activity, exploration, and...

Constructing burrows is energetically expensive, yet is a common trait across a broad spectrum of animals. The benefits of using burrows must therefore outweigh the costs of constructing burrows, which may reduce the risk of predation and/or ease the need for active thermoregulation. We examined the use of burrows in Butterfly Lizards (Leiolepis be...

Plastic pollutants are novel environmental stressors that are now persistent components of natural ecosystems. Endocrine disrupting chemicals such as bisphenols that leach out of plastics can modify physiological responses of animals by interfering with hormone signalling. Here, we tested whether three commonly produced bisphenols, bisphenol A (BPA...

Plastic pollution is a global environmental concern. In particular, the endocrine‐disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is nearly ubiquitous in aquatic environments globally, and it continues to be produced and released into the environment in large quantities. BPA disrupts hormone signalling and can thereby have far‐reaching physiological and ecol...

Estuarine crocodiles Crocodylus porosus inhabit freshwater, estuarine and marine environments. Despite being known to undertake extensive movements throughout and between hypo- and hyperosmotic environments, little is known on the role of the cloaca in coping with changes in salinity. In addition to the well-documented functional plasticity of the...

Amphibians periodically remove the dead skin layer through a process known as sloughing. Because of their thin semi-permeable skin, sloughing is important to maintain skin integrity and biological functions such as ionic and osmotic regulation. However, sloughing has been shown to affect cutaneous ion and water movements, temporarily disrupting osm...

Amphibian skin is highly variable in structure and function across anurans,and plays an important role in physiological homeostasis and immune defence. For example, skin sloughing has been shown to reduce pathogen loads on the skin, such as the lethal fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), but interspecific variation in sloughing frequency is...

Bacterial and viral pathogens can weaken epithelial barriers by targeting and disrupting tight junction (TJ) proteins. However, comparatively little is known about the direct effects of fungal pathogens on TJ proteins and their expression. The disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), is threatenin...

Sloughing maintains the skins integrity and critical functionality in amphibians. Given the behavioural, morphological and osmoregulatory changes that accompany sloughing, this process is likely to be physiologically costly. Chytridiomycosis, a cutaneous disease of amphibians caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), disrupts skin f...

Measurements of historical specimens are widely applied in studies of taxonomy, systematics, and ecology, but biologists often assume that the effects of preservative chemicals on the morphology of amphibian specimens are minimal in their analyses. We compared the body length and body mass of 182 samples of 13 live and preserved (up to 10 years) an...

Chemically mediated interactions are an important component of reptile life. Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) have been documented to locate prey by olfaction, and the recent discovery of a cloacal gland secretion (tuataric acid) suggests chemicals may be used as social signals. Social discrimination of recognized Tuatara populations (i.e., Cook Strai...

Amphibian skin is a multifunctional organ providing protection from the external environment and facilitating the physiological exchange of gases, water and salts with the environment. In order to maintain these functions, the outer layer of skin is regularly replaced in a process called sloughing. During sloughing, the outermost layer of the skin...

Measurements of historical specimens are widely applied in studies of taxonomy, systematics, and ecology, but biologists often assume that the effects of preservative chemicals on the morphology of amphibian specimens do not affect their analyses. We compared the body length and body mass of 14 live and preserved (up to 10 years) amphibian species...

Measurements of historical specimens are widely applied in studies of taxonomy, systematics, and ecology, but biologists often assume that the effects of preservative chemicals on the morphology of amphibian specimens do not affect their analyses. We compared the body length and body mass of 14 live and preserved (up to 10 years) amphibian species...

The ability for animals to become temporarily immobile via external stimulus is known as tonic immobility (TI) and has been widely described among different taxa. However, TI is poorly documented in turtles. We demonstrate TI in newly emerged green turtle (Chelonia mydas) hatchlings in relation to potential practical applications and discuss the me...

The floodplains of many large rivers worldwide are important spawning and nursery habitats for multiple fish species. We investigated the potential importance of different floodplain habitats for fish larvae. Samples were collected from 14 sites along the Waikato River, northern New Zealand, from September to October 2010. Larval fishes were identi...

The Rotopiko (Serpentine) lake complex is one of the Waikato region’s few peat lake systems that contains primarily native aquatic plants. Retaining the natural state of the lakes has been considered a high priority by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and extensive efforts have taken place to prevent nutrient leaching and to control invasive or...