Neuroptera (lacewings) and allied orders Megaloptera (dobsonflies, alderflies) and Raphidioptera (snakeflies) are predatory insects and together make up the clade Neuropterida. The higher‐level relationships within Neuropterida have historically been widely disputed with multiple competing hypotheses. Moreover, the evolution of important biological innovations among various Neuropterida families, such as the origin, timing and direction of transitions between aquatic and terrestrial habitats of larvae, remains poorly understood. To investigate the origin and diversification of lacewings and their allies, we undertook phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial genomes of all families of Neuropterida using Bayesian inference, maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony methods. We present a robust, fully resolved phylogeny and divergence time estimation for Neuropterida with strong statistical support for almost all nodes. Mitochondrial sequence data are typified by significant compositional heterogeneity across lineages, and parsimony and models assuming homogeneous rates did not recover Neuroptera as monophyletic. Only a model accounting for compositional heterogeneity (i.e. CAT‐GTR) recovered all orders of Neuropterida as monophyletic. Significant findings of the mitogenomic phylogeny include recovering Raphidioptera as sister to Megaloptera plus Neuroptera. The sister family of all other lacewings are the dusty‐wings (Coniopterygidae), rather than Nevrorthidae. Nevrorthidae are instead returned to their traditional position as the sister group of the spongilla‐flies (Sisyridae) and closely related to Osmylidae. Our divergence time analysis indicates that the Mesozoic was indeed a ‘golden age’ for lacewings, with most families of Neuropterida diverging during the Triassic and Jurassic and all extant families present by the Early Cretaceous. Based on ancestral character state reconstructions of larval habitat we evaluate competing hypotheses regarding the life style of early neuropteridan larvae as either aquatic or terrestrial.

The sodium storage performance of layered metal dichalcogenide anodes enhanced through nanostructure engineering, crystal structure modulation, doping/alloying and composite design is systematically reviewed.

1. Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China and is of global importance for the conservation of migratory waterbirds of the East Asian -Australasian Flyway. Recent dam construction on the Yangtze River and its tributaries for agriculture and hydroelectric power has affected the hydrological regimes in downstream lakes. The Three Gorges Dam changed the hydrological regime of downstream lakes by reducing wet season flooding and expanding water storage in the dry season. 2. Despite the critical role of Poyang Lake in regional and global biodiversity conservation and the potential adverse ecological impacts of the Three Gorges Dam on downstream lakes, there have been few studies of the hydrological requirements of wintering waterbirds in the middle Yangtze floodplains. 3. We assembled a predictor matrix including three hydrological variables (annual inflow, maximum water level in high water season or MaxWL and minimum water level in low water season or MinWL) and two climatic variables (annual rainfall and biological cumulative temperature or BioT). Using the predictor matrix and annual waterbird census, we built group-specific generalised additive models (GAM) to investigate how waterbird population variations were related to climatic and hydrological factors in the Poyang Lake National Natural Reserve. We then used the modelled predictor-response curves to identify the optimal lake water levels for each waterbird group. 4. The community-level model selected group and the group-varying-coefficient term of BioT, Inflow and MaxWL as explanatory variables. At group level, tuber eaters and sedge foragers responded positively to BioT and MinWL. Seed eaters, invertebrate eaters and fish eaters responded positively to Inflow and negatively to MaxWL and MinWL. Based on the modelled predictor-response curves, we propose the following optimal water level ranges for Poyang Lake wintering waterbird conservation: a) maximum high water season level should be less than 17.4 m; and b) minimum low water level should be between 8.2 m and 8.8 m.