The COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge for health systems. The absence of prior evidence makes it difficult to disseminate consensual care recommendations. However, lifestyle adaptation is key to controlling the pandemic. In light of this, nursing has its own model and language that allow these recommendations to be combined from global and person-centred perspectives. The purpose of the study is to design a population-oriented care recommendation guide for COVID-19. The methodology uses a group of experts who provide classified recommendations according to Gordon’s functional patterns, after which a technical team unifies them and returns them for validation through the content validity index (CVI). The experts send 1178 records representing 624 recommendations, which are unified into 258. In total, 246 recommendations (95.35%) are validated, 170 (65.89%) obtain high validation with CVI > 0.80, and 12 (4.65%) are not validated by CVI < 0.50. The mean CVI per pattern is 0.84 (0.70–0.93). These recommendations provide a general framework from a nursing care perspective. Each professional can use this guide to adapt the recommendations to each individual or community and thus measure the health impact. In the future, this guideline could be updated as more evidence becomes available. The coronavirus disease, COVID-19, emerged in December 2019 in China and managed to spread until three months later, when it was classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). During the first months, health systems had to navigate a highly contagious, global illness with high morbidity and mortality while having no prior evidence, leading to a restructuring of the available resources .The first health measures were based on the modification of individual and social behaviour to prevent transmission ,4,5. SubGiven this situation, nursing has proven to be the backbone of any health system and the front line for the prevention and treatment of disease .In 2020, within the framework of the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, the WHO and the International Nursing Council published a report on the situation of nursing in the world. This report shows the differences between countries regarding training programs, competencies, professional skills, and access to health policies and management positions . Howevercare, which has developed theoretical models and even has standardized languages [Nursing has its own object of knowledge, anguages ,14,15,16anguages . The metanguages .The study of these elements to aggregate the knowledge and management of care led to the development of a theoretical model called the Knowledge Model about Person Care ,18.This model emerged in the interdisciplinary field of nursing and computer science from doctoral studies and is applied in the clinical setting ,20. The vulnerability. Vulnerability is an essential human condition; it accompanies a person throughout life and is linked to the need and competence for self-care [risk in care. The environment can be divided into interpersonal elements  and geopolitical elements  [predisposition [In this model, care is a continuum, ever present in people’s lives whether professionally or not and beyond clinical treatment . The perelf-care ,22. The  system) ,23. The position ,19,20.predisposition together with these limitations to care gives rise to the potentiality for care problems. Problems may be in the subclinical phase (no signs or symptoms are evident) or clinical phase (the problem is expressed in signs and symptoms). The final degree reached by this process is defined as severity. Thus, these care problems determine the level of health of people, and the consequences of these problems  will condition the care of the person in the future [Furthermore, the person may present care limitations: lack of knowledge, ability, or attitude. The e future ,19,20.Health arises as the result of caring for the person in their environment at every moment and, in addition, as a resource for the continuum of care ,24. NursThis model is centred on the person, designed from the individual person’s perspective as well as those of their families and communities, all of whom benefit from health services. Caring attention focuses on needs with an integrated approach. The environment frames the situation where care is performed, such as home, school, work, or health centre, always respecting the sociocultural mandate to provide culturally consistent care. Caring interactions are continuous in people’s lives, not only when there is an illness ,26,27.Nurses have a coaching role of helping people develop their highest competence and become the main characters in their care management. Nurse intervention that acts for the person will be limited to timely moments .Self-Care Deficit Theory points out that nurses act when there is a self-care deficit . These self-care alterations can occur during life stage transitions and through health diversion processes such as COVID-19. Nurses address these situations through the nursing care process, where they establish the clinical judgment that is expressed through nursing diagnoses [The Knowledge Model about Person Caretakes Orem’s theory as a reference for the relationships between need, care competence, and nursing support systems. Orem’s iagnoses ,15,28,29iagnoses .statements designed to help end-users make informed decisions on whether, when and how to undertake specific actions such as clinical interventions, diagnostic tests or public health measures, with the aim of achieving the best possible individual or collective health outcomes” [Recommendations are “utcomes” . These rutcomes” .At present, health lifestyle recommendations are the main axis of sanitary action against COVID-19, although there are developed vaccines for this health problem .vital care continuum and who needed to be trained in decision-making to modify and adopt health care behaviours.The aim of this study was to design a guide for care recommendations against chronic risk of COVID-19. The guide was designed from a person-centred model. The person who is using a health care system is the main character in their The design was based on a mixed-method study for the development and validation of a guide for care recommendations. The guide was elaborated through a person-centred design and with a perspective based on a nursing care model.The research team explained to the participants the Knowledge Model about Person Care. Person-centred care suggests a needs analysis from the individual person perspective, incorporating a person’s family; community; cultural preferences; and home, school, and work environments. People are the main characters in their care management and therefore of their behaviour modificationThe study methods were compliant with the Good Reporting of a Mixed Methods Study (GRAMMS) checklist .The procedure combined two phases because this mixed method allowed for (a) collecting the available published knowledge and (b) obtaining feedback from experienced experts regarding this field in which previous evidence is very scarce. After the data collection, phase II was to validate each expert recommendation by applying a consensus index. This procedure combined different techniques that reduced the limitations that appear when only one method is used.The first phase of the study was carried out from May 2020 to June 2021 and entailed knowledge acquisition through elicitation with a group of experts.The study began from the Care Management of Madrid Health Service (SERMAS), which formed a coordinating team of four experts. The coordinating group included three women and one man, with a mean age of 44.75 (33–63) years, all with more than ten years of professional experience; three held doctorate degrees, and one woman held a master’s degree. All of them had teaching and research experience. The four experts represented the nursing profiles of management, teaching, and care in hospitals and health centres.® tool and was based on some files designed by the coordinating team.The data collection for the elicitation of knowledge used the Microsoft ExcelThe files contain some tables that take as a reference the eleven functional patterns of Marjory Gordon  because The table proposal for each functional pattern was approved by piloting with a group of five clinicians external to the research. The objective of the pilot study was to ensure that each form could be completed in a self-administered way. These experts were nursing professionals with care dedication and previous experience in research as participants in groups of experts. These professionals provided recommendations to improve the clarity of the content and the explanation that should be sent to the participants aimed at achieving individual and independent fulfilment without third party intervention.Each functional pattern presented the data structure shown in All files were sent to a group of clinical experts recruited through intentional sampling representing health centres throughout the region.The group included six participants, all women, five nurses and a physiotherapist, all with more than ten years of professional experience. Nurses represented all levels of care: two at an adult hospitals, one at a children’s hospital, one in community and family primary care, and one in an extra-hospital emergency service. Four of them had postgraduate degree , and three of them had teaching experience.The participants included nurses from hospitals because they participated in the treatment of diseases but also in prevention and promotion. Hospital professionals attended to the demands for health care in the emergency department in cases of suspicion and diagnoses of COVID-19 and resolved doubts from relatives of hospitalized people; in addition, they received training for subsequent mass vaccination campaigns for the population, which included care advice. The physiotherapist was included because in Spain, this discipline is related to nursing direction in many health centres and works together with nursing to rehabilitate patients at hospitals.All participants had clinical experience in health care for people with COVID-19. All had previously participated in at least one care research project.No one of the participants represent a scientific society or a company related to health or pharmaceuticals that could have created any conflicts of interest that could have affected the results.The coordinating group held a face-to-face session lasting an hour and a half to present the research project to the group. The session was divided into one hour for an exposition of the study aim, methodology, duration, and intended results and thirty minutes for answering questions and doubts. All participants were informed and agreed to participate in the project.Once participation was accepted, the coordinating group sent the participants an email with the summarized information , and then the patterns were sent with a time interval of one month between each shipment. Each participant received an Excel file with the table corresponding to the functional pattern and had to complete it within one month, maximum two months. In this first phase, each participant answered individually and anonymously and justified each recommendation with at least one bibliographic source . The participant returned the completed file to the coordinating group via email.At the end of the collection phase, the coordinating team grouped all the contributions of each functional pattern in the same file and unified the recommendations based on their content. The contributions with the same main focus  were unified in a single recommendation to which all the bibliographical references provided by the experts were linked. These files were used in the following study phase.The second phase of the study was carried out from July 2021 to December 2021 and applied expert group consensus methodology. The coordinating group returned the result of the previous unification to the group of experts.Each participant received an Excel file to complete a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of a table with the unified recommendations of each pattern together with the percentage of participants who had provided some record related to it.Do you consider this recommendation adequate for the care of people at risk or diagnosed with COVID-19?”. The evaluation used a 5-point Likert scale, where 1 means “not representative” and 5 means “fully representative”. In addition, each recommendation included a section so that the experts could add comments in free text on aspects such as the reason for their score or suggestions for changes in the wording. This 5-point rating scale was the same as that for nursing outcomes classification (NOC) used in previous similar studies [The question that guided the assessment was “ studies .Each pattern was sent every two weeks. The experts had that time to carry out the evaluation and return it to the coordinating team via email.The analysis of the responses was based on the content validation index (CVI). The CVI is the result of dividing the number of positive responses  by the total number of responses. Previous research references established the cut in different ratings ,35,36,37The result of the scoring was returned to the group of participants as final feedback on the agreed proposal. The participants validated the recommendations as a unique group, and each of them had the opportunity to share their degree of agreement with all of the recommendations agreed on in the first phase.Data were next acquired and validated by the same group of experts: The first phase was individual, anonymous, and based on publications, and the second phase was collective, by consensus, and adapted to the clinical realities the professionals had observed.The experts sent a total of 1178 records on potential recommendations for the 11 functional patterns. All 54 elements into which the functional patterns were broken down included at least 1 record. These records constituted 624 contributions, which were later unified into 258 recommendations.The summary of the distribution of recommendations for each pattern can be seen in In total, 246 recommendations (95.35%) were validated, with a mean CVI by patterns of 0.84. The pattern with the lowest score was sexuality–reproduction, with CVI = 0.70, and the pattern with the highest score was coping–stress tolerance with CVI = 0.93.The functional pattern self-perception–self-concept showed the highest validation at 83.33%, and sexuality–reproduction showed the lowest percentage with 28.57%. Conversely, this same functional pattern on sexuality obtained the highest percentage of non-validated recommendations, 19.05%.Some participants did not assess some recommendations because they considered that they were not able to issue an assessment, either because the content of the recommendation was foreign to their discipline, in the case of the physiotherapist, or because they lacked specific clinical experience with the area, in the case of the nurses. In total, there were 30 blank responses (22.41%).Detailed information for each functional pattern is shown in The recommendations with high validation were 170 (65.89%).In addition, 23 recommendations (8.91%) achieved a CVI = 1.00, either the maximum score  or the maximum score minus one point. Behavioural areas such as diet, exercise, positive mental health and coping were the recommendations that most participants identified when providing references.The recommendations with the highest validations are shown in On the opposite side, 12 recommendations (4.65%) were not validated because they obtained a CVI < 0.50. All these recommendations presented a percentage of references of 17%, that is, only one of the six experts had provided some source to substantiate it.The recommendations with the lowest CVI were the suspension of mass vaccination campaigns, the delay in changing the intrauterine device for one more year than recommended, the marking of personal belongings, and the idea that older people do not express uncertainty about the future.These recommendations were not validated for various reasons. The lack of minimal evidence or sufficient study is alleged for the recommendations of electrocardiographic monitoring, vitamin supplements, increasing the recommended time of the intrauterine device, or assuming that retired people do not show uncertainty. In addition, the fear of contagion or boredom is applicable to any vital stage. For other recommendations, such as menstrual hygiene, prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, or assisted reproduction, the experts did not consider that these were specifically related to COVID-19 or that their consequences were due to confinement. Regarding the use of active videogames, two experts stated that they consider it generic and not specific and recommended it be included as a technique or resource within broader recommendations, such as multicomponent programs. For vitamin D supplementation and the development of a new body image, the experts did not consider that there was sufficient evidence; they only appeared in the literature because they were being or could be the subject of study.Finally, some recommendations explicitly related to the clinical treatment of COVID-19 and its consequences in professional health care should be highlighted. Cutaneous drug reactions were being studied but did not allow for a clear and specific recommendation. Mask regulations were constantly changing, and, massive vaccination campaigns were maintained in the region, with special attention to maintaining the childhood vaccination schedule.The recommendations with less validation are collected in The aim of this study was to develop a recommendation guide for people who were at risk of or diagnosed with COVID-19. A guide that, unlike the publications prior to the study, was based on a nursing care model called the Knowledge Model about Person Care, centred on the person in any context and providing care from a comprehensive, integrated, and continuous perspective.The results show care recommendations for all functional patterns, covering all life stages and even specific circumstances such as pregnancy. Likewise, these recommendations can be transferred to different contexts due to their concrete and brief form that allows for their adaptation to individuals or groups.However, despite the importance of the recommendations in the prevention of the pandemic, research studies on the use and effectiveness of this intervention are scarce. The main sources of recommendations for the general population are websites such as the WHO, a global reference entity in this area, and government websites, such as the ministries of health of the different countries ,39.At the end of the study, no publications were found with a similar objective to the one proposed in this research or with an approach from nursing care models.The results obtained can be linked to each of the elements of the nursing care model shown in the introduction.Regarding the person as the centre of interest, several aspects can be highlighted.The person is an individual who can be characterized according to their age, vital processes, and previous health alterations or, as highlighted in this study, by their employment status.Age differentiates two vulnerable population groups at the extremes. These two groups were already identified in the first WHO clinical guidelines and have been maintained and developed in the latest version of their clinical management guide ,8. ChildRegarding vital processes, the recommendations include pregnancy, breastfeeding, and bereavement. Pregnancy and lactation are a period of special interest due to the women’s changed needs and demands and their impacts on their foetuses or new-borns and also because studies on pharmacological treatments in this population are scarcer than studies on typical adult populations. Another situation of special interest in the pandemic is grief. High mortality and confinement conditions impacted ways of grieving the losses of loved ones .On the other hand, previous health alterations have been the subject of interest. Lopez et al.  provide Finally, within health deviations, there are also studies that provide recommendations from groups of experts based on the available evidence and focused on specific circumstances. Shanthanna et al.  highlighThese last two publications share a research interest in health professionals as a population at risk for COVID-19 infection. This situation does not derive from any personal health conditions or vulnerabilities but from their exposure as professionals and they conditions they work under.Accordingly, the recommendations refer to environments of special interest such as health centres, residences, and schools. These environments had specific regulations during lockdown and subsequent reopening. Health centres had to adapt material and human resources by reinforcing services such as intensive care units in hospitals or, later, health centres for mass vaccination. The homebound experienced significant impacts in the first months, with high morbidity and mortality as a result of the fragility of the population. Schools closed during the period of confinement, and teaching strategies had to be modified. In all these environments, technologies helped bridge distances and isolation, allowing contact with health professionals, caregivers, and teachers to be maintained. The results reported in the study coincide in highlighting the importance of technologies ,48,49,50Some limitations of the study need to be highlighted. First, the present study began when no vaccine had been approved, and therefore, this recommendation was not added until the final revision.The research uses a methodology that integrates the consensus of experts from recommendations that have at least one referenced bibliographic source. Nevertheless, the low number of publications on recommendations and, more specifically on nursing care recommendations for COVID-19, make the initial level of evidence weak. No clinical research was found on the effectiveness of this type of nursing intervention, and therefore, the level of evidence is reduced to expert consensus and literature reviews, as occurs in this study. In contrast, studies on pharmacological treatments and vaccines are abundant and based on randomized clinical trials. In the future, the identified recommendations can be considered a common basis for the nursing profession to generate specific research that clinically validates the recommendations and increases their level of evidence.The limited number of experts should also be considered a limitation. Studies with a larger number of participants or focused on certain professional contexts can improve the methodological quality of the research. This study only included professionals who work directly in patient-centred care and who depend organizationally on nursing management. Medical professionals were not included because their disciplinary object is in the disease. However, future studies may include other perspectives such as specialists in family and community medicine.Finally, research has shown that the context has a special interest in an infectious process because risk control is essential. This study is focused on the individual, but some contextual issues appear at both interpersonal  and geopolitical  levels. This element of the metaparadigm of care can be studied in greater depth with similar studies.The research carried out shows the importance of comprehensive and integrated care of the person in the face of any health alteration. Nurses are the guarantor of this care and must lead clinical decision-making in this field of knowledge. This approach has already been highlighted in the Nursing Now strategy and is on the agenda for the 2030 action plan ,52.Likewise, the results of this study offer a common basis for all nursing professionals because it groups all the recommendations under a common disciplinary framework. These recommendations can be transferred to clinical practice through health advice, and future studies can measure the effectiveness of this type of educational intervention in behaviour change.This care recommendation guide is directed towards application in the regional context of Madrid, although the participants contribute to a general vision from all nursing clinical perspectives and support each recommendation with previous international publications. The guide is limited in its practical application because results have limited external validation. This limitation is justified because of the person-centred perspective used in this study, that is to say, according to the individual characteristics of the target population considering their environments and their cultural preferences. Extrapolating the recommendations to other regions requires an adapted study that considers care realities in each populational group.The nursing perspective in approaching any health situation, from healthy person to health deviation, has value for society. Care models allow for transcending the disease or reason for consultation that leads the citizen to demand health care. The care models allow us to open our gaze by placing the person at the centre of the system considering not just the individuals but their social and physical contexts.These areas are visible in the recommendations because they include aspects explicitly linked to COVID-19  and, in addition, more general aspects that are related to the lifestyle of the person.Educational interventions that seek to modify behaviour start from understanding the baseline situation of the person and their vulnerability. In this sense, these results offer recommendations applicable to the general population such as diet, exercise, rest, social relations, sexual education, and physical and cognitive activity as well as aspects of coping and spirituality. On the analysis of this situation, the changes produced by the risk situation or diagnosis of COVID-19 exposed care problems that can be labelled into standardized nursing language.This change of focus in the investigation of health problems differentiates nursing and makes it visible, as well as providing a basis for further studies that could delve into specific areas but would maintain the same disciplinary perspective of care.


Food is one of the most traded goods, and the conflict in Ukraine, one of the European breadbaskets, has triggered a significant additional disruption in the global food supply chains after the COVID-19 impact. The disruption to food output, supply chains, availability, and affordability could have a long-standing impact. As a result, the availability and supply of a wide range of food raw materials and finished food products are under threat, and global markets have seen recent increases in food prices. Furthermore, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has adversely affected food supply chains, with significant effects on production, sourcing, manufacturing, processing, logistics, and significant shifts in demand between nations reliant on imports from Ukraine. This paper aims to analyze the impacts of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on the effectiveness and responsiveness of the global food supply chains. A PRISMA  approach, including grey literature, was deployed to investigate six key areas of the food supply chains that would be impacted most due to the ongoing war. Findings include solutions and strategies to mitigate supply chain impacts such as alternative food raw materials, suppliers and supply chain partners supported by technological innovations to ensure food safety and quality in warlike situations. The current Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on 24 February 2022 has led to the loss of lives, property, assets and infrastructure in Ukraine, resulting in a humanitarian disaster. It is rapidly becoming the most severe refugee crisis in Europe since World War 2 . It has Previous food supply chain shocks and price increases are well characterized and include droughts, floods and conflict in 2007 and 2008 across several nations resulting in the banning of food export and subsequent increase in fuel prices and rapid two-fold increases in food prices . COVID-1In this context, this paper addresses the impacts of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on all the actors of the food supply chain and will discuss solutions and strategies to counter these impacts. The hypothesis underlying this research is that there will be significant impacts on the effectiveness and responsiveness of global food supply chains as a result of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The related research question is as follows. What strategies or solutions may be implemented to mitigate the impacts of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on global food supply chains?Large-scale review syntheses, especially those concerning timely and evolving topics, have grey literature as an important source of information . A grey The impact categories that are the focus of this research were initially identified with expert consultation using a qualitative two-round e-Delphi method ,12 with A grey literature search plan was developed incorporating three different searching strategies: (1) customized Google search, (2) targeted websites, and (3) news reports. The grey literature search was supplemented with relevant peer-reviewed articles from the SCOPUS and Google Scholar databases using the same search terms: “Ukrain*”, “Russi*”, “war”, and the keywords of each of the identified impact areas. Each impact area was searched in this way by one of the co-authors based on their area of expertise, supported and corroborated by the other co-authors. Searches were performed from 13 March 2022 to 14 May 2022.This research employed a PRISMA approach with the eligibility criteria shown in The participants in the e-Delphi identified the top six supply chain impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as shown in Additional impacts that were not part of the top six impacts included impacts on sustainability.The following sections present the results of the review synthesis (literature review) for each of the six impacts shown in Ukraine has a major role in Europe and beyond in terms of agriculture and food production. The national capability to cultivate soils, sow, and harvest crops has been reduced since the start of the war . Major fAround 70% of Ukraine’s land is agricultural, which is similar to other European nations such as the UK, this includes cultivated land , gardens, orchards, vineyards, meadows, and pastures . The agrIn the short term, the main food-security concern in Ukraine is food access, not food availability, since available stocks in Ukraine were approximately 1.14-fold greater than the estimated annual demand . RestricThe main small-grain crops planted in Ukraine are winter wheat, spring barley, and maize . AlthougFAO  estimateThe major concerns and impacts caused by the war for the most critical food sectors in Ukraine are shown in In addition to agrifood-security concerns in Ukrainian and Russian agrifood sectors, the war has already affected global food supply chains. The major role that Ukraine and Russia play in global food supply chains can be understood using reported production and domestic supply statistics ,18,19,20Ukraine maize production is 2.6% of global production exporting Ukraine exports around 15% of the global maize and is 5th ranked behind USA, Argentina, and Brazil;Ukraine barley production is 4.9% of global production and it is the 2nd ranked global exporter behind France with 13.2% of the total world exports;Ukraine produces 29.1% of the global sunflower oil, and exports 44% of the global supply of sunflower oil. Ukraine is the largest exporter of sunflower seeds globally.Supply is specific and nations directly dependent on these agrifood supplies, including some of the most vulnerable food security countries. For instance, India, China, and some Middle East countries rely on imports of sunflower oil from Russia and Ukraine, while Egypt and Libya obtain two-thirds of their wheat supply from these countries . LebanonAn increased production in other countries could compensate for this reduction in the availability of foods produced in Ukraine and Russia. The EU has allowed planting and harvesting in fallow land where there was a requirement to leave 5% of the land in an enterprise uncultivated for crops to reduce these current pressures ,24.The war in Ukraine has created an enormous food security challenge in the country, with important consequences for global food supply chains. The food market has been disrupted by restrictions in export licensing and port closures . Major fThe resilience of the Ukrainian domestic food supply can be forecasted because of existing statistical reporting systems associated with a well-developed agri-production industry and its established dependencies across the global food system. There is currently uncertainty regarding the continued scaling up of conflict and its duration but what is known is the Ukrainian agri-production industry depends heavily on fuel imports, with about 70% of imports of petrol and diesel coming from the Russian Federation and Belarus . Fuel su2 resolution [An important current indicator of current production stress is the monthly summary of the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) at 1 kmsolution . FAO hassolution  using sasolution .Crop production data were obtained from the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service  which re6 tonnes of global 760,926 × 106 tonnes global crop as reported by FAOStat in 2020, and as the final breaking of wheat embargoes between the USSR and USA in the late 1980s demonstrated. Ukraine is ranked 8th in global wheat production with some 5.5-fold less production than China which produces the greatest amount (134 × 106 tonnes). Logistics and location stifle supply with the UN FAO estimating that 49 percent of winter wheat and 38 percent of rye to be harvested in July–August 2022 are in occupied or war-affected areas . Importing nations have a high dependency on this supply that will be limited by potential to harvest and transport. The small grains global market demonstrates how complex geopolitical controls of food and feed supply are with significant volumes of maize from Ukraine to China, Western Europe, and Northern Africa. Most notably the war will restrict shipping from the Black Sea ports. Wheat is typically highlighted by current commenters. Ukraine’s wheat production is 3.3% of the total global wheat production  has important commercial relationships with Ukraine, importing wheat, maize, sunflower seed, and oil as well as malt, rye, and sorghum ,35. The During the conflict in March 2022, the city and port of Odessa have currently suffered less disruption than other cities in the west of Ukraine. The strategic importance of ports  would restrict the transport of wheat, cereals, and other commodities trade ,39. CurrThe international market demonstrates the importance of commodities exported from Ukraine. With the reduced supply of these commodities and continuous demand for them, buyers in European countries are looking for alternative suppliers. Important global producers of these commodities are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Mexico, and the USA .It is important to consider that European countries and the main global producers of these commodities were not accommodating the absence of Ukrainian commodities for trade offs to be in place and active . ConsequWithin the EU, the supply chains that are partly controlled and determined by Ukrainian agricultural imports include the secondary food processing sector  which have direct impacts on retail and food service sectors . As the The threat of supply chain disruption, and the resilience of the European supply chains of wheat, maize and sunflower seed and oil must be considered. Differences in their imports from Ukraine and other European countries , most coFamine and pestilence have at times been reported as companions to war and death, so it is perhaps unsurprising that the invasion of Ukraine was accompanied by turmoil in markets for food and medicine. Since the war began, wheat prices have risen over forty percent, to prices not seen since the 2007–2008 World Food Price Crisis . Other rBefore the invasion, Ukraine was the fourth largest exporter of cereals in the world and one of the world’s largest producers, harvesting over 3.7% of the world’s total cereals . The shaWhile cereal prices have already reacted to the war in Ukraine, these price hikes are to be understood as anticipatory. Ukraine’s largest crop in tonnage and dollar value is maize, which was mostly intended for export and mostly intended as animal feed. Year 2021 already saw maize harvested at some 40 million metric tonnes (MMT), and the next harvest was intended to be in the autumn of 2022. This maize would have been destined to feed animals over the winter, primarily in China (8.4 MMT), Holland (2.3 MMT), Egypt (2.2 MMT), Spain (1.9 MMT), and Iran (1.2 MMT). The shortfall in maize production will thus have direct effects on consumers in meat availability starting in 2023. There is substantial time for would-be importers to arrange alternative sources via global markets, and they will probably do so. For example, three separate American states  individually produce more than 40 MMT of maize per year, and the global impact will primarily be financial .The role of Eastern Europe and Central Asia as a potential new “breadbasket” for the world has been called into question due to previous export restrictions affecting the reliability of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine (RUK) as exporters . UkrainiUkraine was the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil in 2021. This value is significant, having grown to over $6 billion in 2021. Despite the fact that the war threatens to remove billions of dollars and trillions of calories from the global marketplace through the disruption of Ukrainian seed oil shipments, the impact on the consumer is likely to be attenuated. Edible fats remain extremely fungible, with other oils substituting for a sunflower oil well. Oils can also be stored for long periods of time, and major blocs such as the EU and the United States maintain significant reserves.Pharmaceutical production in Ukraine had enjoyed double-digit growth for years prior to the war, but Ukraine remained heavily dependent on foreign sources for needed medications . As of 2Temporary shortages of specific medicines are likely but almost certain to be minor in the face of a $1.2 trillion global pharmaceuticals market. Of greater concern are the tens of millions of people within Ukraine who will have uncertain access to supply chains for needed medicines for the duration of the war. This will lead to considerable excess death as much of the Ukrainian population is over forty years old.Nowhere is the disconnect between the importance of a supply chain and its financial cost more dramatic than it is with potable water. Pipelines carrying potable water for millions of Ukrainians had already been threatened and disrupted by Russian military and paramilitary actions for years before the 2022 invasion , but in Ukraine produced meat primarily for internal consumption, predominantly poultry and pork. While Ukraine was a net exporter of meat, roughly 2.2 MMT of meat was produced for consumption within Ukraine on a yearly basis. The disruption of Ukrainian animal agriculture represents a substantial impact on food security for the Ukrainian people, although its impact on world poultry prices will be minimal. The impact of the direct loss of Ukrainian meat imports will be minor compared to the indirect effects of the global rising cost of animal feed due to the disruption in Ukrainian maize .All in all, the Ukrainian people should consume over 80 billion calories every day to maintain the health of the people. Trollman et al.  confirmeAs Ukraine has historically been a net food exporting country, almost none of the supply chain infrastructure to provide that from external sources exists. The loss of Ukrainian contributions to the global food marketplace is felt the world over, but the looming food insecurity of the Ukrainian people is an often-overlooked problem. The displaced people of Ukraine number more than the entire populations of neighboring Belarus, Slovakia, Hungary, or Moldova, and there are no established means for them to acquire needed food, water, or medications. Such supply chains will need to be built from scratch in the face of an ongoing Russian invasion.The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been associated with the fastest displacement of people since the Second World War, with over ten million people internally displaced or international refugees in just one month of conflict . DisplacHistorical examples are uncommon, but there are precedents set by the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide  and the A plausible scenario is one where some portion of Ukraine remains under Russian occupation for a protracted period of time. The economic prospects of those occupied regions are fairly bleak. The Russian Federation is already maintaining multiple occupied frozen conflict zones, creating obvious comparison points. Both the Transnistria region in Moldova  and the Labor productivity is hampered in multiple ways. Forced migration removes workers from employment appropriate to their skills, and it is often difficult for them to find equivalent employment at their destination. Employment vacancies that do exist become more difficult to fill when potentially qualified candidates are evacuating. The war is also destroying infrastructure at a tremendous rate, with estimates ranging from $63 billion  to nearlNot only humans, but also livestock face mass displacement in times of war. The Ukrainian agricultural sector primarily produces meat for internal consumption, and the Ukrainian people consumed poultry, pork, and beef for 99% of their meat consumption . Almost Almost 90% of Ukraine’s poultry are industrial broilers. Worldwide there are over 23 billion such birds, and a typical bird spends 21 days as an egg and just 42 days out of the egg before slaughter . The cycIn the intervening years between the eventual return of peace and stability to Ukraine and the reestablishment of a domestic beef industry, the capacity for feeding and caring for full-grown and near full-grown cattle will exist in Ukraine. This capacity can be used for finishing and fattening animals raised in other countries. An independent Ukraine may be an attractive option for farmers in currency-limited and sanction-restricted countries, as beef cattle finished on Ukrainian grain will be considered Ukrainian and become eligible to be sold on to European consumers, regardless of the sanctions imposed on the country cattle were calved in.Indirect losses to productivity in other countries are also a certainty. Ukraine has historically been one of the major sources of fertilizers in Europe, accounting for as much as 25% of all fertilizers produced on the continent in 2010 . While tNeighboring Belarus exports over $2 billion worth of potassium rich fertilizers every year. While there is currently no reason to believe that Russian or Ukrainian troops will destroy Belarusian potash production, there may be sanctions that hinder or delay the export of fertilizers from Belarus. Most of the Belarusian fertilizer is intended to be exported to Brazil, China, India, or Indonesia, and none of those countries are currently preventing trade in goods from Belarus. However, the sanctions remain fluid, and Belarusian goods may be partially or wholly blockaded by third countries whether the would-be recipient countries are signatories to sanction regimens or not.Countries worldwide are barely recovering from the disastrous economic consequences of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine could make this economic situation even worse, particularly in the global food supply chain. These economic impacts on the food supply chain are predicted to have a substantial influence on food safety and quality in various ways, including price increases of energy causing rising prices of food, feed, and fertilizers, and changes in seasonal worker availability, among others . AlthougHistorically, wars and other major violence tended to have both direct ruinous impacts on food security and indirect severe consequences on food quality and safety, with lasting effects over time. For example, a recent study discussed the impact of the Syrian conflict on crop production and food security in Syria, even more than ten years after the start of this conflict . AnotherAs Ukraine has one of the biggest nuclear industries in the world , the queAnother food safety-related issue that could be directed affected by wars is the spread of diseases. FAO highlighted the significant risk of proliferation of animal diseases, such as African swine fever (ASF) in Ukraine and neighboring countries . The incThe Russian invasion of Ukraine and sanctions against Russia and Belarus will increase the global demand for food and increase food prices, which may impact food quality and safety. Price spikes caused by the reduction of food availability are projected to be accompanied by impaired product quality due to a possible shift in consumption patterns towards cheaper food products but often with lower quality. For example, the declines in Russian exports will require food companies to omit or substitute certain ingredients or change the manufacturing process or recipe and find alternatives in the short term, which may lower the quality of the products, as these alternatives in some cases may not meet desired product specifications  or EU legislations ,90. BesiFood fraud and food adulteration issues have at times been reported in countries with conflicts. The key characteristics of food fraud are non-compliance with food laws, and misleading the consumer for financial gain. Food fraud can include a substitution of species, adding or replacing food ingredients with undeclared substitutes, and discrepancies in food production or farming method ,95. OccuUkraine is the largest producer of honey in Europe, with more than half of Ukrainian honey being exported ,98. HoneFood supply has too often been a politically driven resource restricted by conflict and war. The quick solution to this crisis is to halt the war and allow agricultural production to resume immediately and safely to avoid further potential impacts on food security in Ukraine—and beyond—in the coming days, weeks, and months.Food production, processing, and storage have been shown by this research to be most under pressure from disruption to planting and harvesting which includes the availability of agricultural labor and agricultural inputs. The identified solution given continued conflict is to minimize disruption to global supply chains by finding alternative sources for the lost crops. This aligns with the suggestions of the FAO  for undeThis research also indicates that food-dependent services requiring human labor and/or livestock are likely to be significantly affected. Increasing support for innovations and digital transformation would alleviate human labor issues. However, the human-livestock interrelated issues are difficult to solve while conflict continues, and culling is a likely outcome. If possible, livestock needs to be protected and have access to animal feed, fodder, and veterinary medicine to avoid further stock reduction Following food production, impacts on food transport logistics are suggested to be alleviated by initiating alternative sources of supply and bringing supply chains home to ease over-reliance on risky foreign suppliers. Improving the flexibility of transport logistics with respect to global food supply chains would also be beneficial. Establishing a policy for maintaining a ‘safety stock’ of critical food commodities should be undertaken at a national level.For effects on the food market/retail, and consumers, it will be essential to know the level of inflation on food products and consumer costs to build strategies to preserve profitability without compromising affordability.This research has also indicated that food quality may suffer as a result of the conflict. The need for cybersecurity has risen due to the state-sponsored cyber-attacks and the increasing level of automation in the supply chain. Devising a plan for workforce safety and bracing for disruption to logistics and supply chain partners would be key. Therefore, food supply chain stakeholders should work together to determine and decide on the medium to a long-term course of action.This article analyzed the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the global food supply chains. The hypothesis underlying this research has been confirmed in that there will be significant impacts on the effectiveness and responsiveness of global food supply chains as a result of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Six key areas of the food supply chain that would be impacted due to the ongoing war were highlighted: (a) Food production, processing, and storage, (b) Food transport logistics, (c) Food market/retail, (d) Consumers, (e) Food dependent services, and (f) Food quality. Research showed that although this conflict will affect the majority of the economies, however, the most affected economies are in Europe and Africa. It is advisable for these adversely affected economies to explore and find alternative food supply chain partners and solutions in North America, South America, the Middle East, Australasia, and some regions of Asia and Africa that have been less affected by this conflict. This article has also briefly suggested solutions and strategies for the global food supply chains to counter similar warlike situations.


We used observational data collected during a mark-recapture study that generated a total of 7503 captures of 6108 unique individuals representing three endangered butterfly species to quantify inter-and intraindividual variation in temperature utilization and examine how activity patterns vary according to season, time of day, and ambient temperature. The Marsh Fritillary, the Apollo, and the Large Blue differed in utilized temperatures and phenology. Their daily activity patterns responded differently to temperature, in part depending on whether they were active in the beginning, middle or end of the season, in part reflecting interindividual variation and intraindividual flexibility, and in part owing to differences in ecology, morphology, and colouration. Activity temperatures varied over the season, and the Apollo and the Large Blue were primarily active at the highest available ambient temperatures (on the warmest days and during the warmest part of the day). The Marsh Fritillary was active early in the season and decreased activity during the highest temperatures. The relationship between individual lifespan and the average temperature was qualitatively different in the three species pointing to species-specific selection. Lifespan increased with an increasing range of utilized temperatures in all species, possibly reflecting that intra-individual flexibility comes with a general survival benefit. This calls for an increased understanding of whether and how individuals, populations, and species cope with and are affected by changing and extreme temperatures. To enable the identification of underlying mechanisms, allow for reliable scenarios of future change, and assess the generality and reproducibility of research findings, it is also essential that the responses of species with different characteristics are simultaneously studied and systematically compared5. In response to increasing temperatures, species can move to colder areas7 by shifting distributions northwards (in the northern hemisphere) or to higher altitudes9. Besides large and small scale changes in species distributions, phenology changes are well-documented responses to elevated temperatures, with many species advancing their activity such that they become active earlier (or later) in the year12. Such phenology shifts may represent non-genetic responses in the form of developmental plasticity and phenotypic flexibility that has the potential to buffer against environmental change and uncertainty4. However, species and populations may also adapt to changing temperatures via genetically based evolutionary shifts in the shape of the reaction norm linking performance to temperature13. These can manifest as changes in the location of the optimal temperature or in the width of the thermal performance curve .Ongoing climate change imposes severe threats on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human well-being worldwide16. Being ectothermic, they are particularly well suited for studying responses to variation and change in temperature, both at different spatial and temporal scales and at different levels of organization, from behavioral and physiological responses of individuals to community-wide shifts in species composition and trait values17. For example, evidence is mounting that variation in range shifts, and phenology in response to climate change is associated with species traits19. However, species-level responses represent the joint outcome of the decisions and relative fitness of individuals. That temperature change may differentially affect different life cycle stages, from the egg-laying female to egg, larva, pupa, and imago, potentially complicating the situation further. For example, increased nitrogen loads may cause the shadowing of microclimatic conditions, and even in times of climate warming, the larvae of some butterfly species may suffer from lower temperatures on the ground20.Lepidopterans comprise a phylogenetically and functionally diverse, geographically widespread, and ecologically important group of animals that for long have attracted attention by ecologists and evolutionary biologists23. Analogous to species range shifts, individuals can seek shade and select microhabitats with thermal properties that match their phenotypes and temperature preferences24. Analogous to phenology shifts, individuals can cope with unfavorable temperatures and avoid overheating by advancing or delaying the timing of their daily activities25. In principle, such intra-individual behavioral adjustments represent a form of phenotypic flexibility that can be targeted by natural selection and potentially undergo evolutionary shifts26. However, the evidence for this type of genetically based adaptation to rising and variable ambient temperatures is limited27. In particular, studies that quantify individual variation and estimate the magnitude and direction of selection on behavioral and physiological traits that influence the ability to cope with warm and changing thermal conditions are rare28. However, comparisons and knowledge of thermoregulatory mechanisms, seasonal and daily activity patterns, and how natural selection acts on thermal behaviors in different species can help assess their vulnerability to global warming22.Adult insects, including butterflies, use a suite of physiological and behavioral adjustments to regulate body temperature, and their ability to maintain favorable temperatures is affected by several phenotypic traits, including body size and colorationEuphydryas aurinia), the Apollo (Parnassius apollo), and the Large Blue (Phengaris arion)) that differ in body size, color pattern, life-history, thermal niches, and phenology adjust their daily timing of activity depending on season and in response to changes in ambient temperature. We selected these three different and distantly related species in part because they are threatened and in part, because they differ in morphology, physiology, life-style and microhabitat use. Yet, they co-occur within our study site on northern Gotland (see below) thus allowing for powerful comparisons of their responses to temperature and temperature change. In addition to the between-species comparisons, we quantify both inter-and intraindividual variation in temperature utilization and explore how these are associated with the lifespan of individuals. Specifically, we examine whether and how: (i) the thermal niche changes over the season within each species, (ii) phenology differs between the three species, (iii) the thermal niche varies among the three species according to their phenology, (iv) the daily timing of activity is associated with ambient temperature, (v) the shape of the behavioral reaction norm linking activity to temperature is different for individuals that emerge and are active in the beginning, middle, or end of the flight period, and (vi) how thermal niches vary within species . Finally, (vii) to evaluate natural selection and the potential for adaptive responses, we examine whether there is an association between the variation in the thermal preferences (utilized temperatures) and the lifespan of individuals. For this, we used a unique dataset of 7719 individually marked butterflies together with high-resolution temperature logger data.Here we studied how three globally endangered butterfly species , protected by law within the EU and red-listed in EuropeThymus serpyllum (in our study area). Females lay their eggs on the host plant. The butterfly is univoltine and active from July to August29. The larva hatches in August and is adopted by Myrmica ants to their nests, and the butterfly larvae continue feeding on ant broods as a parasite30. The larva hibernates in the ant nests and pupates in June. Parasitic wasps can attack the larvae, and the adult butterflies are sometimes caught by dragonflies and spiders31.The large blue is a small shiny blue butterfly with dark spots on the forewing measuring from 32 to 42 mm. It has a western Palaearctic distribution across large parts of Europe to China. It is a very local and thermophilic species associated with dry grasslands. In the study area the species occurs in dry unfertilized calcareous grasslands and alvar that in most places remain naturally open due to the poor soil and slow accumulation of humus. The butterfly visits many different flowers for nectar, while the larva specialises in feeding only Sedum album (in our study area). Females lay their eggs on shrubs, bushes and different vascular plants. The butterfly is univoltine and active from June to August29. The eggs overwinter, and the dark and orange conspicuously looking larvae hatch March/April and pupate in June.The Apollo is a large white butterfly from 73 to 87 mm with black and red elements of variable size on the wings. It has a scattered distribution across large parts of Europe to China. This iconic butterfly primarily inhabits areas where bare rocks and vegetation free surfaces occur. In the study area, the species occurs on open alvar terrain that in most places remains naturally open due to the lack of vegetation establishment on the limestone. Since the 1950ies, this threatened butterfly has disappeared from large areas and the remaining populations are very isolated. The butterfly is a keen visitor of many different flowering plant species for nectar, while the larva only feeds on 33. The butterfly is visiting different plant species for nectar, and the larva is specialized to only feed on Succisa pratensis (in our study area). Females lay egg batches under the leaves of the host plant. The butterfly is univoltine and active from May to June, and the larva hatch in July/August29. The larvae live gregariously and spin a silk web, by binding together leaves of the foodplant, in which they live and feed. After changing into the 4th instar the larva hibernates low down in vegetation and start to feed again in spring. The fully-grown larvae pupate in May/June.The marsh fritillary is a butterfly with an average size of 33 to 48 mm in wingspan and orange to brown, with black dots. It is distributed in northern Africa and across large parts of Europe to China. It occurs very locally and is inhabits fens and ungrazed grasslands in the study area2 (10 km × 6 km) is located close to Slite on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea . We tested two models with the realized temperature and sex as the response variable, the first one with butterfly individuals as a random term, against the null model, comparing the log-likelihood. We included sex as a factor in the models to test if individuals within each sex consistently utilize relatively lower temperatures and others utilize relatively higher temperatures.For all statistical analyses, the R software was used35. The time of the day was converted to radian (8:00 being 0 and 18:00 being 2*pi), allowing it to fit as a sine and cosine wave36 in a linear regression model. Similarly, to account for the seasonal activity changes, we converted the day of capture to radian, with 0 as the first day the species was recorded and 2*pi as the last day). The other continuous variable, the temperature, was scaled for all regression analyses. To control for possible effects of sex, we included sex as a fixed factor in the model. We also controlled the varying sampling effort by adding the number of persons involved in sampling as a fixed effect in all regression models.To examine whether and how the daily timing is associated with ambient temperature while accounting for the cyclic nature of the time of the day, we used a trigonometric regression approachTo analyze how butterfly activity changes over the day, we first summed the number of individuals captured for each species in 1-h bins from 8:00 to 18:00 and then used a generalized linear model (GLM) with the number of individuals caught as the response variable and a negative binomial error structure. As explanatory variables (fixed effects), we included sex of the individual , the temperature (with a linear term and a quadratic term of degree two), the time of the day (as sine and cosine wave) and its interaction with the linear temperature term, the day of the season (as sine and cosine wave) and the number of persons involved in the sampling.t-test.To examine whether and how the thermal niche changes over the season within each species, we analyzed the temperature utilization relative to the time of the flying season with GLMs. The response variable was the presence/absence of the species in each daily hour bin. The explanatory variables were the temperature , the day of the season (as sine and cosine wave), and their interaction and sex as a fixed factor. We did not evaluate the effects of interactions between sex and the other explanatory variables to avoid over-parametrization of statistical models and because sample sizes were very different for males and females, both of which may generate unreliable results and conclusions. However, to assess whether results were qualitatively similar or different in the two sexes, we also performed separate analyses for males and females. To test whether or not species were consistently flying above the average available temperature, we first computed the daily difference between the average available and average used temperature and then tested if the mean distribution of these differences is significantly different from zero using a one-sample 37 for spline curve-fitting technique to display available and realized temperatures along the flying season of each species, with 4, 7, and 4 knots for the Marsh Fritillary, the Apollo, and the Large Blue, respectively. For illustrative purposes , realized temperature range, and date of the first capture as explanatory variables.38. Raw data plots illustrating the distribution of the analyzed data are presented in Fig. The package glmmTMB was used for the GL(M)Ms that assumed a negative binomial error with a log link function structure for the activity pattern, binomial for the temperature niche models, and a Gaussian error structure for the lifespan and individual thermal niche models. Model marginal effects and confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using the ggeffects packageIn 2020, we captured a total of 6108  unique butterfly individuals. The recapture rate was 0.34, 0.10, and 0.28 for a total of 7503 captures . The female frequency was 0.25, 0.29 and 0.20, respectively. Individuals of Marsh Fritillary, Apollo, and Large Blue butterflies were recaptured up to a maximum of 4, 5, and 4 times, respectively. The number of individuals recaptured at least three times was 124, 59, and 8, and at least four times was 35, 14, and 1, respectively.There were pronounced differences in phenology between the species. The Marsh Fritillary was active first , followed by Apollo, which had the most extended activity period , and the Large Blue  Fig. . The Mart-test) . The intraindividual temperature range during activity spanned on average ca 5 °C in all three species, but with considerable variability among individuals  in the Marsh Fritillary, from 22 to 32 °C (n = 60) in the Apollo, and 23 to 29 °C (n = 8) in the Large Blue   Table , suggestrange of utilized temperatures in all three species indicates that high intra-individual flexibility  comes with a general survival benefit. These findings and their implications are discussed in greater detail below.Mapping of thermal environments together with high-resolution data on activity patterns and knowledge of how natural selection acts on thermal behaviors in different species can inform about variation in sensitivity to temperature change and ultimately help assess their vulnerability to global warming. This study aimed to investigate and compare the patterns, causes, and consequences of variation in phenology, daily timing of activity, and temperature utilization in three endangered butterfly species. We demonstrate that the Marsh Fritillary, Apollo, and the Large Blue differed in utilized temperatures and phenology and that their daily activity patterns responded differently to temperature. We argue that these differences between the species in part depend on whether they were active in the beginning, middle, or end of the season, and in part, reflect a combination of interindividual variation and intraindividual flexibility. In addition, differences between the three species in ecology, body size (wingspan), and coloration may have contributed to the observed dissimilarities, as discussed further below. We also show that activity temperatures varied over the season, with two species (the Apollo and the Large Blue) being primarily active on the warmest days and during the warmest part of the day, except on very hot days and towards the end of their respective activity periods. The Marsh Fritillary that was active early in the season instead decreased activity during the highest temperatures. Our study design allowed for novel insights into the fitness consequences of temperature utilization in butterflies. The demonstration that some individuals were consistently active at relatively low and others at relatively high ambient temperatures points to pronounced interindividual variation (within each of the two sexes) in thermal biology in all three species. The associations with individual lifespan illustrate this variability’s ecological importance, and the relationship between lifespan and average utilized temperature was qualitatively different in the three species . We argue that this provides rare evidence of species-specific selection and fitness consequences of thermal preferences in butterflies. By contrast, the finding that lifespan invariably increased with an increasing 40. In keeping with this notion, we propose that the differences between species in temperature utilization, phenology, and viability selection indicated by our results may be partly attributable to the thermal significance of body size and coloration41. Previous studies report spatial and temporal community-wide shifts towards smaller and paler species of butterflies in warmer climates43. Our findings that the largest species in this study, the Apollo butterfly, was active during the warmest part of the season and generally utilized the highest ambient temperatures do not conform with this pattern. However, the Apollo is also light in color , the differential viability selection on temperature utilization indicated by our results may contribute to the evolution and continued maintenance of species-specific thermal biology. There is little doubt that the variation in temperature utilization among individuals 54.The substantial differences in phenology between the three species seemingly coincide with the variation in utilized temperatures. Notably, the Marsh Fritillary was active earliest in the season and utilized the lowest temperatures on average, compared with the other two species. Advanced phenology may be required to avoid overheating if the species are adapted to lower temperatures . Conversely, their early adult flight period might have induced correlated microevolutionary shifts in behavior and thermal physiology such that they can better cope with lower temperatures55. The butterfly species depend on their host plant for larvae development and nectar plants for adults. These plants are only available during certain time windows. The Marsh Fritillary larvae feed on Succisa pratensis from July to May that flowers in August/September56 and imagoes are nectaring from various flowers during the activity period. Apollo larvae feed on Sedum album from March to May, and the Large Blue larvae feed on Thymus serpyllum in August and forage on ant brood from September to May. Both the Apollo and the Large Blue feed almost exclusively on nectar from their host plants  that flowers during the adult activity period. Besides searching nectar on their larval host plants, Apollo frequently visits the nectar-rich plants’ T. serpyllum and Centaurea scabiosa that have a longer flowering season and are available later in the season compared to the larval host plant Sedum album 29. The phenological separation between butterfly species may lessen interspecific competition for nectar resources. In our study area, these three sympatric species dominate the butterfly community, and if their activity periods were completely overlapping, over-exploitation might impair their foraging performance57. One way to evaluate this competitive displacement hypothesis would be to compare the patterns reported here with the phenology and temperature utilization of the same species in areas where they are allopatric/do not coexist.The differences may also reflect phenological synchrony between the butterflies and their respective host plantsWhatever ultimate driver(s) contributed to their evolutionary origin, we suggest that the phenology differences between the three species are maintained by ongoing selection. In support of this interpretation, our analyses revealed statistically significant viability selection on the seasonal timing of activity in two of the studied species Table . In the 60. Regarding the potential for evolutionary adaptations to increasing temperatures in the butterflies studied here, our results suggest that there exists variation in temperature utilization among individuals for selection to act upon in the populations of all three species. We cannot estimate the heritability of phenology or thermal traits from the data in this study. However, previous studies have revealed significant heritability estimates for thermal traits62. We observed associations of temperature utilization with lifespan indicative of selection in all three species. Given that all the requirements are met, we conclude that there is potential for adaptive responses and different microevolutionary shifts of thermal traits in the system studied here. Moreover, the general survival benefit of high intra-individual flexibility of activity temperatures will likely shield the populations against the erosion of genetic variation typically associated with directional selection53, thereby enabling future adaptive responses to continued climate change. The aforementioned directional viability selection on the seasonal timing of activity may also induce adaptive shifts in phenology. However, whether these responses will be sufficiently rapid to keep up with climate change is uncertain.Theory and empirical evidence concur that the combination of large interindividual variation and high intra-individual flexibility observed in all three species may buffer the populations against environmental change and uncertainties, stabilize population dynamics, reduce the risk of local extinctions, facilitate the establishment of new populations, and promote evolvability22, our results show that there were periods during the season and parts of days when stressful temperatures (too high or too low) suppressed activity, thereby likely constraining foraging and reproductive opportunities. However, firm projections require that the consequences of temperature change on other life-stages and other species with which the butterflies interact are also considered63. Maintaining phenological synchrony with host plants may be particularly important55.Regarding implications for population trends32. In Finland, a tenfold decline following the 2018 drought was observed in the closely related Glanville fritillary64. Previous studies have shown that Large Blue fluctuates dramatically in abundance65 and that populations often decrease following years with high temperatures and droughts46. Less is known about how the population dynamics of Apollo is affected by temperature, as it is very rare throughout the distribution66.In our study area, Marsh Fritillary decreased in occupancy by over 30% between 2018 and 2019 due to an extreme droughtbetween the three species are in qualitative agreement with the differences in thermal tolerances extracted from the species distribution areas67. Bladon, et al.22 report that butterfly species relying on microclimate selection have suffered larger spatial population declines over the last 40 years than those altering their temperature behaviourally. However, butterflies have generally declined in numbers and distribution throughout Europe16.Regarding distribution shifts, the estimates of temperature utilization in our study are higher overall. Still, the differences 27. There are thus many ways by which modifications in phenology, daily activity patterns, abundance, and distribution of these butterflies may cascade up and down in the ecosystems and affect the services they provide.The consequences of changing temperatures go beyond the responses and species studied here. Butterflies interact with several other types of organisms, as competitors, pollinators, prey for spiders and birds, and even as predators 29, illustrating the difficulty of projecting how biodiversity will be affected by continued climate change. We detected stabilizing selection in the Apollo and a negative association of temperature utilization with lifespan in the Large Blue, both of which are highly thermophilic66, at this high-latitude and relatively cold study site is alarming. Climate change allows many species to spread northward, but where can these highly specialized butterflies escape continued warming?In sum, our results demonstrate striking differences among the three butterfly species in phenology, utilized temperatures, how ambient temperatures modified daily activity patterns, and how the individual variation in utilized temperatures was associated with lifespan. This emphasizes the need to simultaneously study and compare the responses to temperature change of species with different characteristics. The responses were strongly species-specific, even though the three species share a relatively similar ecology and lifestyle69.To allow for firm conclusions regarding long-term responses and evolvability, an important next step is to determine whether the extensive interindividual variation and intraindividual flexibility in temperature utilization indicated by our results have a genetic basis and whether they are influenced by conditions experienced during the egg, larval or pupal stages. Future investigations should also investigate how changing, and extreme temperatures affect reproductive success, mortality of early life stages, recruitment, and population dynamicsFinally, studies that examine whether the patterns, underlying drivers, and fitness consequences of variation in temperature utilization documented in this study are different from those in other populations of the same species that occupy areas with different environmental and ecological conditions, particularly with regards to the seasonality of temperature regimes, may advance our understanding of the evolution of biodiversity and aid the development of strategies for its conservation.Supplementary Information.


Digital innovation is challenging the traditional way of offering financial services to companies; the so-called Fintech phenomenon refers to startups that use the latest technologies to offer innovative financial services. Within the framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), the primary purpose of this paper is to develop a causal-predictive analysis of the relationship between Subjective Norms, Attitudes, and Perceived Behavioral Control with the Intention to Use and Behavioral Use of the Fintech services by companies. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling methodology was used with data collected from a survey of 300 companies. Our findings support the TRA and TPB models and confirm their robustness in predicting companies’ intention and use of Fintech services. Financial technology innovators must understand the processes involved in users’ adoption to design sound strategies that increase the viability of their services. Studying the antecedents of behavioral intention to adopt Fintech services can greatly help understand the pace of adoption, allowing these players to attract and retain customers better. This study contributes to the literature by formulating and validating TPB to predict Fintech adoption, and its findings provide useful information for banks and Fintech companies and lead to an improvement in organizational performance management in formulating marketing strategies. Digital innovation has burst into finance, generating new business models that disrupt the organizational model of traditional banking. This digital disruption is challenging the traditional way of offering financial services to companies in more agile, flexible, transparent, and economical ways. The Fintech phenomenon comes from the union of the English words Finance and Technology and refers to startups that use the latest technologies to offer innovative financial services. Fintech is a “technologically enabled financial innovation that could result in new business models, applications, processes or products with an associated material effect on financial markets and institutions and the provision of financial services” EBA . The FinThe use of technologies by financial services firms is not new; financial services have been long implemented by applying internal technological solutions or by relying on outsourcing arrangements with external service providers to provide technological solutions. Nevertheless, in recent years, this process appears to have risen to a new level due to the wide range of financial innovations implemented, the significant investments in new technologies—especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic—and the blend of new firms entering the financial markets. According to Kou et al. , new stuFintech services include various innovative financial services, such as payment technology, crowdfunding platforms, wealth management, insurance, and currencies. Their main features are to enhance customers’ experiences with financial services by increasing transparency, cutting costs, eliminating intermediaries, and making financial information accessible , and only a few studies have investigated the use of Fintech innovations from both technological and behavioral theory perspectives  developed by Ajzen  and the Our contribution is three-fold. First, this paper combines TPB and TRA to study the influence behind companies’ adoption of Fintech services. These theories have been extensively applied in other fields but not in Fintech services adoption studies. Both theories were selected based on the factors that drive companies to use Fintech services since we consider that the focus must be on accepting the service rather than accepting the technology. Second, from a methodological perspective, there is a need for further quantitative research, including explanatory analyses and predictive studies. Although some studies that apply Partial Least Squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) have stressed the predictive nature of their analyses, the assessment has been based exclusively on techniques designed to evaluate the in-sample predictive power of the models. Therefore, this paper seeks to advance this emerging line of research by testing the model’s out-of-sample predictive power. Third, our research is focused on studying companies’ actual use of Fintech services, a field still unexplored. Organizational acceptance is based on the adoption behavior of the organization’s chief executive officer (CEO) or chief financial officer (CFO), who finally decides whether the company should use new financial services.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In the next section, some relevant literature is reviewed. Then, a conceptual framework and some hypotheses are introduced in detail, along with some reasons for their adoption. The following section introduces the methodology, followed by the data analysis and results. Finally, the discussion and conclusions are presented.The TPB, introduced by Ajzen  as a conAt its core, the TPB suggests that the likelihood of an individual performing a particular behavior is affected by that individual’s intention to engage in that behavior Ajzen . AccordiFishbein and Ajzen  developeIn some cases, considering these two variables has not proven to be sufficient for predicting the behavior of human beings. This assumption is based on TPB, which, as previously indicated, contemplates the concern of a further variable, perceived behavioral control (PBC), to help predict the choices individuals would be willing to make. PBC is the expectation about the ease or difficulty in implementing a certain behavior. In this sense, TPB is proposed to eliminate the limitations of the original model in dealing with behavior regarding which people have incomplete volitional control Ajzen .TPB has been widely used to examine the adoption of Internet-based services and Internet-mediated marketplaces by prospective users in many contexts: participation in online communities  database are shown in Table Based on TPB, the topics listed below are the factors influencing the BU of Fintech services.Fintech companies may not be able to reap the benefits of innovation if the technological advancement is at a higher rate than consumer awareness and use  toward using Fintech Services.PBC is “the individual’s perception of how easy or difficult the performance of a certain behavior is, capturing the extent to which he or she views themselves as having the capacity to perform it” . Following Nunnally , values,Third, the average variance extracted (AVE) measure is applied to assess each construct’s convergent validity. AVE measures the percentage of the variance of a construct explained by its indicators, and these values should be greater than 0.50  even though Henseler et al.  suggest It is also essential to analyze the possibility of Common Method Bias (CMB) and multicollinearity between predictive variables. CMB occurs when variations in responses are caused by the instrument rather than the respondents’ actual predispositions that the instrument attempts to uncover. A comprehensive collinearity test introduced by Kock and Lynn  is recomAfter analyzing the measurement model and confirming that the measurement in the model met the conventional standards of reliability and validity, the next step in the PLS analysis is to evaluate the structural model and test the proposed hypotheses.2 values , the R-squared value represents the proportion of variation in the endogenous latent variables that can be explained by the effect of one or more exogenous latent variables. The judgment of the R2 value is highly dependent on the specific research discipline. Accordingly, some researchers, such as Hair et al.  significantly influence the company’s intention to use Fintech services (BI), which matches the TPB model. Furthermore, the findings also reported that only two TPB variables (AT and SN) significantly influence the company’s BU, while PBC does not directly influence BU. Nevertheless, the indirect effect of PBC on BU via AT and BI must be considered.Furthermore, the research model contains other indirect effects that should be analyzed using a bootstrap method with n = 10,000  due to the significance of the indirect effect via AT  and the direct effect . Since the sign of the direct and indirect effects are both positive, the partial mediation effect is considered complementary. One approach to have further information of the mediated portion is calculating the ratio of the indirect-to-total effect also known as Variance Accounted For (VAF) value. A VAF value higher than 80% represents full mediation, a VAF value between 20% and 80% means a partial mediation, while a value below 20% means no mediation. Thus, the result (VAF = 37.66%) demonstrates that AT partially mediates the influence of SN on BU  due to the significance of the indirect effect via AT and BI  and the direct effect . The strength of this complete mediation can be assessed by calculating VAF = 54.90%. This result demonstrates that AT and BI fully mediates the influence of PBC on BU.Second, both AT and BI mediate the effect of PBC on BU. According to Nitzl et al. , a full predict to determine the predictive power of the proposed model. Most research interprets the coefficient of determination (R2), which assesses the in-sample model fit of the dependent constructors’ composite scores by using the model estimates to predict the case values of the total sample. Still, the R2 value only assesses a model’s explanatory power and provides no indication of its out-of-sample predictive power in the sense of its ability to predict the values of new cases not included in the estimation process  to evaluate the prediction error of the PLS-SEM analyses  due to the significance of the indirect effect via AT  and the direct effect . This result demonstrates that AT partially mediates the influence of SN on BU.The relationship between SN, the company’s AT, and BI also shows significant indirect effects. In this sense, AT mediates the effect of SN on BI, as shown in Fig. Finally, H6 is supported at a 99.9% confidence level, showing that the greater SE, the greater PBC. A company’s confidence is higher when it has greater competence in controlling and managing financial tasks  since our model explains 62.3% of the variance of the BU of Fintech services, which can be considered satisfactory. Furthermore, our model shows an adequate out-of-sample predictive power of the model, which allows testing the generalizability of the model to other populations.Our results show, first, the variable which has the highest impact on the use of Fintech services is the intention to use, in line with Singh et al. . In otheThirdly, the abovementioned relationship is more significant than PBC, which may be due to the high-friendly apps offered by Fintech companies that focus their strategy on the User Experience. Thus, companies’ motivation to use Fintech services is based more on the image and reputation of their customers, providers of services, and competitors than on the resources available to use Fintech services.Conversely, since the relationship between PBC and BU is significant only mediated by AT and BI, our results show that the use of Fintech services does not depend on the user perception of the difficulty level of the Fintech service. Thus, technology  does not seem to be an obstacle to adopting Fintech because the technological base is not unknown from the user’s perspective. Considering that Fintech services are based on friendly and easy-to-use apps, this fact may be crucial to decide the driver of using Fintech services. Indeed, the fear seems to arise from the scarce knowledge that those in charge of SMEs have of the new financial services. This fact is highly relevant for those companies that provide these Fintech services since their plans should focus on developing word-of-mouth strategies and obtaining current clients to recommend the service directly.An additional strategy for Fintech companies could be attempting to establish these services as prestigious or as a status symbol. Messages showing that Fintech users are prestigious or innovative companies could be suitable for accepting these services by late adopters.Our research aims to reduce the gap in empirical works related to accepting Fintech services. It also provides suggestions to managers of both financial institutions and Fintech companies and developers of new financial services linked to technologies to design sound strategies that increase the viability of their services and attract companies to Fintech services.Our study makes several contributions to the research on adopting Fintech services. First, our work is one of the first to propose and empirically evaluate a behavioral and technological model that combines TPB and TRA. Consequently, this improves scientific knowledge and the academic literature on consumer behavior.Second, our results show that satisfaction with traditional banking services is highly compatible with Fintech services. This conclusion, obtained from the survey, highlights the competitiveness and the complementarity of the services offered. Most of our respondents are freelancers or companies with less than ten employees, meaning that using Fintech services requires less staff.Third, this study improves the understanding of the effects of SN on the AT and intention to use Fintech services through the analysis of partial mediation. The present study shows that both characteristics had a considerable influence of similar intensity. In addition, a full mediation of PBC via AT and BI on BU is also shown; thus, this research helps improve the understanding of these variables’ importance by analyzing their mediated effects within the Fintech sector.Fourth, our results demonstrate the importance of intention to use as the main antecedent of BU. This relationship corroborates the importance of this variable in general innovations, but more specifically in innovations related to financial technologies.Fifth, the proposed model shows a high-significant relationship between SE and PBC, extending previous studies’ results to the Fintech context.Finally, the out-of-sample predictive power of the model proposed was tested by applying PLSpredict, which provides the ability to predict the values of new cases not included in the estimation process. Most research interprets the coefficient of determination, which assesses the in-sample model fit of the dependent constructors’ composite scores to the novelty of the Fintech sector; thus, the model’s predictive power becomes even more important.This research also has important implications for providers offering these financial services. First, Fintech companies need to improve usability among users, and, to this end, companies may be one of their main targets due to the possible influence on their employees related to the use of these innovative financial services.Second, to improve user confidence, service providers should pay attention to SN, including word-of-mouth strategies in their action plans, and reward current clients for recommending the service directly.Finally, the Fintech sector should consider the changes in consumer behavior due to social changes in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic (Liébana-Cabanillas et al. One of the study’s main limitations is that the sample is made up of potential Spanish companies. Future research could include users from other countries to generalize the theoretical conclusions reached in this study. Another limitation is the type of online survey based on a structured questionnaire to determine the recommendation intention of the surveyed users at a given time. Future research could use longitudinal data and a mixed-method approach with qualitative techniques such as fs-QCA.Finally, the authors of this study also suggest that future studies may be conducted to explore the role of personality traits in technological behavior. Liu et al.  suggest