Influence of respiratory mode on the thermal tolerance of intertidal limpets

Predicting ecological responses to climate change requires an understanding of the mechanisms that influence species' tolerances to temperature. Based on the idea that air and water breathing animals are differentially suited to life in either medium due to differences in their respiratory morp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2018-09, Vol.13 (9), p.e0203555
Main Authors: Kankondi, Sebbi L, McQuaid, Christopher D, Tagliarolo, Morgana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air temperature
Animals
Biology and Life Sciences
Breathing
Climate change
Coastal ecosystems
Earth Sciences
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Ecosystems
Environmental aspects
Gastropoda - physiology
Global temperature changes
Heart Rate - physiology
Laboratories
Life Sciences
Medicine and Health Sciences
Metabolism
Morphology
Organisms
Physiology
Respiration
Species
Temperature
Temperature effects
Temperature tolerance
Thermal stress
Tolerances
Zoology
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Summary:Predicting ecological responses to climate change requires an understanding of the mechanisms that influence species' tolerances to temperature. Based on the idea that air and water breathing animals are differentially suited to life in either medium due to differences in their respiratory morphology, we examined the possibility that the thermal tolerances of co-existing intertidal pulmonate and patellogastropod limpets may differ in different breathing media. We tested this by determining each species' median lethal temperature (LT50) and cardiac Arrhenius breakpoint temperature (ABT) as measures of upper thermal tolerance limits, in air and water. Although all these species can survive in air and water, we hypothesised that the pulmonate limpets, Siphonaria capensis and S. serrata, would have higher thermal limits than the patellogastropod limpets, Cellana capensis and Scutellastra granularis, in air and vice versa in water. The results did not support our hypotheses, since C. capensis had similar thermal tolerance limits to the pulmonate limpets in air and the pulmonate limpets had thermal tolerance limits similar to or higher than S. granularis in water. Thus, considering pulmonate and patellid limpets as groups, we found no differences in their collective upper thermal tolerance limits in either medium. We conclude that differences between these two limpet groups in their respiratory morphology do not influence thermal tolerance, but that tolerances are species-specific.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0203555