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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Potential for adaptation to climate change in a coral reef fish.
TL;DR: A high potential for adaptation of aerobic scope to higher temperatures, which could enable reef fish populations to maintain their performance as ocean temperatures rise is indicated.
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Evolution and plasticity of thermal performance: an analysis of variation in thermal tolerance and fitness in 22 Drosophila species.
Heidi J. MacLean,Jesper Givskov Sørensen,Torsten Nygård Kristensen,Torsten Nygård Kristensen,Volker Loeschcke,Kristian Beedholm,Vanessa Kellermann,Johannes Overgaard +7 more
TL;DR: The idea that the evolution of cold tolerance has allowed species to persist in colder environments is supported and it is suggested that the temperature range for optimal thermal performance is either fixed or under selection by the more similar temperatures that prevail during growing seasons.
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The relative importance of deforestation, precipitation change, and temperature sensitivity in determining the future distributions and diversity of Amazonian plant species
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use herbarium collection records to model the current and future distributions of ca. 3000 Amazonian plant species and project these distributions into the future under a range of different scenarios related to the magnitude of climate change and extent of deforestation as well as the response of species to changes in temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric concentrations of CO2.
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A pantropical analysis of the impacts of forest degradation and conversion on local temperature
TL;DR: It is concluded that forest‐dependent species that persist following conversion of rainforest have experienced substantial local warming, making it more likely that compounding effects of future perturbations, such as severe droughts and global warming, will exceed species' tolerances.
Journal ArticleDOI
Oxygen delivery does not limit thermal tolerance in a tropical eurythermal crustacean
TL;DR: This study shows that the oxygen transport capacity is maintained at high temperatures, and that other mechanisms, such as protein dysfunction, are responsible for the loss of ecological performance at elevated temperatures.
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