Impacts of climate warming on terrestrial ectotherms across latitude.
Curtis Deutsch,Joshua J. Tewksbury,Raymond B. Huey,Kimberly S. Sheldon,Cameron K. Ghalambor,David C. Haak,Paul R. Martin,Paul R. Martin +7 more
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The results show that warming in the tropics, although relatively small in magnitude, is likely to have the most deleterious consequences because tropical insects are relatively sensitive to temperature change and are currently living very close to their optimal temperature, so that warming may even enhance their fitness.Abstract:
The impact of anthropogenic climate change on terrestrial organisms is often predicted to increase with latitude, in parallel with the rate of warming. Yet the biological impact of rising temperatures also depends on the physiological sensitivity of organisms to temperature change. We integrate empirical fitness curves describing the thermal tolerance of terrestrial insects from around the world with the projected geographic distribution of climate change for the next century to estimate the direct impact of warming on insect fitness across latitude. The results show that warming in the tropics, although relatively small in magnitude, is likely to have the most deleterious consequences because tropical insects are relatively sensitive to temperature change and are currently living very close to their optimal temperature. In contrast, species at higher latitudes have broader thermal tolerance and are living in climates that are currently cooler than their physiological optima, so that warming may even enhance their fitness. Available thermal tolerance data for several vertebrate taxa exhibit similar patterns, suggesting that these results are general for terrestrial ectotherms. Our analyses imply that, in the absence of ameliorating factors such as migration and adaptation, the greatest extinction risks from global warming may be in the tropics, where biological diversity is also greatest.read more
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Phylogenetic constraints in key functional traits behind species' climate niches: patterns of desiccation and cold resistance across 95 Drosophila species.
Vanessa Kellermann,Volker Loeschcke,Ary A. Hoffmann,Torsten Nygaard Kristensen,Camilla Fløjgaard,Jean R. David,Jens-Christian Svenning,Johannes Overgaard +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used an array of phylogenetic analyses to determine two key climatic niche traits (desiccation and cold resistance) for 92-95 Drosophila species and assessed their importance for geographic distributions, while controlling for acclimation, phylogeny, and spatial autocorrelation.
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Broad-scale ecological implications of ectothermy and endothermy in changing environments
TL;DR: Differences in thermal physiology affect how organisms interact with and are constrained by their environment, and may ultimately explain differences in the geographic pattern of biodiversity for endotherms and ectotherms.
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No-analog climates and shifting realized niches during the late quaternary: implications for 21st-century predictions by species distribution models
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare the climate distributions for fossil-pollen data from 21 to 15 ka BP (relying on paleoclimate simulations) when communities and climates with no modern analog were common across North America to observed modern pollen assemblages.
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Anthropogenic impacts on tropical forest biodiversity: a network structure and ecosystem functioning perspective
TL;DR: This work discusses the current knowledge of network structure and ecosystem functioning, highlighting empirical examples of their response to anthropogenic impacts, and considers the future prospects for tropical forest biodiversity, focusing on biodiversity and ecosystem function in secondary forest.
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Physiological Responses to Shifts in Multiple Environmental Stressors: Relevance in a Changing World
TL;DR: The symposium "Physiological Responses to Simultaneous Shifts in Multiple Environmental Stressors: Relevance in a Changing World" focused on physiological studies in which multiple environmental variables were simultaneously examined and brought together an international group of early-career and established speakers with unique perspectives on studies of multistressors.
References
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