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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Global warming favours light-coloured insects in Europe
TL;DR: It is shown, using data of 473 European butterfly and dragonfly species, that dark-coloured insect species are favoured in cooler climates and light-colour species in warmer climates, and this provides support for a mechanistic link between climate, functional traits and species that affects geographical distributions even at continental scales.
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The ‘wet–dry’ in the wet–dry tropics drives river ecosystem structure and processes in northern Australia
Danielle M. Warfe,Neil E. Pettit,Peter Davies,Bradley James Pusey,Stephen K. Hamilton,Mark J. Kennard,Simon A. Townsend,Peter Bayliss,Douglas Ward,Michael M. Douglas,Michele A. Burford,Marcus Finn,Stuart E. Bunn,Ian A. Halliday +13 more
TL;DR: In this article, the major flow regime classes characterising northern Australian rivers, from perennial to seasonally intermittent to extremely intermittent, and how these regimes give rise to marked differences in the ecological character of these tropical rivers, particularly their floodplains.
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Conservatism of lizard thermal tolerances and body temperatures across evolutionary history and geography.
TL;DR: It is found that critical thermal maxima are highly conserved with location accounting for a higher proportion of the variation than phylogeny, and thermal tolerance breadth is conserved despite critical thermal minima showing little niche conservatism.
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Temperature extremes and butterfly fitness: conflicting evidence from life history and immune function
TL;DR: The data suggest that global warming will not only reduce performance through direct effects of thermal stress, but also through secondary effects on adult immune function, which may be missed when exclusively focussing on other life‐history correlates.
Journal ArticleDOI
Environmental synergisms and extinctions of tropical species.
TL;DR: It is asserted that environmental synergisms are more likely the norm than the exception for threatened species and ecosystems, can vary markedly in nature among geographic regions and taxa, and may be exceedingly difficult to predict in terms of their ultimate impacts.
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